It’s amazing how often people end up choosing a service provider because of some free promotion such as ‘free domain names’. Eagerness to grab this freebie may lead to a lot of other problems down the road, so be careful before jumping on free domain promotions.

Free Domain Name Offers

The majority of the companies who offer free domain names are normally web hosting companies who bundle a free domain name together with their paid web hosting solutions. While this is a reasonable package, it’s worth noting that it’s always best to manage your own domain names with a reputable registrar.

Domain names are one of the most important assets in your website and you must be in control of it. Many people have spent lots of time and money to build their site and gain search engine rankings, only to have it disappear because they forgot to renew their domain.

It is the renewal cost of the domain that you want to watch out for when taking a more detailed look at the free domain name offers. As you can see in Microsoft’s free domain names promo, the renewal cost after the first year is US$5 higher than most other domain registrars. Five bucks may not sound like much but if you consider that the renewal price is about $10, an extra $5 is huge in percentage terms.

Heavily Discounted Domains

Similar to free domain names, are promotions which push heavily discounted domains and once again, there’s a catch. In most cases, the really cheap domain registration is attached with a condition that the name must be purchased and renewed for at least a year where the cost of domain name renewal in the second year is much higher than industry standards.

If you simply can’t resist these free deals, one simple tip is to go with reputable domain name registrars when choosing free domain offers. This is because they will have the complete infrastructure for you to host, manage and transfer your domains if you are a domain name trader.

When Yahoo offered very cheap domain name registration rates last year, many domainers rushed to register domains there only to find out later that it was a nightmare trying to transfer the domain away from Yahoo to another registrar. Some domain sellers even found it easier to give their whole Yahoo account to the buyer!

Domain Name Discount Codes & Coupons

Instead of relying on the freebies, one good way to save money when registering domain names is to use the available discount codes and coupons from domain registrars.

You can often find savings of up to 35% or more by using discount coupons to buy domains from Godaddy and a range of other specialist domain name companies.

Find out more about the importance of domain names.