What price a domain name?

The wholesale price for a domain name is $22.55 for two years. The retail price is another matter. Who to go with?

 Yesterday my friend Ray wanted to register a domain name (a com.au name) and asked me who we should do it with.

I looked up the auDa website to find out who the authorised resellers are and was surprised to find that the wholesale price for a com.au domain is published at $22.55 for two years, but the price it resold at varies dramatically, from $27.95 for two years to $301 for two years.

From what I could figure out from their websites, the following table seems to be all the prices you could be charged for two years’ registration with GST included.

Some outrageous differences, but it didn’t really answer the question though: who should Ray register with?

My thoughts were as follows. First, you want to register your domain name with a different organisation to the one that’s hosting the website or email. This stops technical staff at the hosting company holding you to ransom (like everyone else I have had my share of run-ins with the undead of the commercial world, technical staff at internet companies).

Second, you want to know whether you can ring someone on the weekends and get help. Nothing worse than finding your website doesn’t work on the weekend, or Outlook can’t find your mail server.

Third, you want to know what tools they offer you on their site to manage your domain name (having different logins for different domain names with the same provider is a major pain).

And finally, how much?

Of course, Ray said: “That’s great, but who do you use?”