Is that Domain name really yours?

In my years of consulting clients I have witnessed horror stories of clients building a beautiful website only to find out that they really don’t own the domain name they have branded and may be limited to choose where they host that website.  What?!  How can that happen?

Consider this…  you have a great idea, service or product that you want to market on the world wide web.  You navigate to Wix, Squarespace, Amazon hosting,  Google Hosting or a number of other mega sites that tout “Free Web Domains”, “Free Website Hosting”, “Get Your Website in Hours”…  you get the drift.  But buyer beware!  Free is never really free.

The companies that market these “Free” items are FOR PROFIT companies.  Be cautious and thorough when considering the offerings.  Once you get signed up for a low-cost or “free-website”, the hidden costs begin.  All the extra add-on’s that make your site function like a pro can be priced separately with the piece-meal costs really adding up.  In addition, that “Free Domain” very well might be registered to that FOR PROFIT company and they actually own it, not you!  Sure, you can get them to transfer ownership to you – usually for a fee.  Another tidbit of information:  ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) rules state that you cannot transfer a domain name to a different registrar within 60 days of making changes to the registrant name, organization or email address.  That’s a built-in additional 60-days where they can milk you for all of those extra costs to optimize and maintain your website.  This can become a nightmare for any small business owner.

Okay.  So you go through the steps of transferring the domain ownership to you and your organization.  Then, after 60 days, you decide you want to transfer your domain to a Hosting company that is more flexible, has better customer service and security.  But wait!  You find that the awesome graphics and videos that define your website belong to that “Free”, FOR PROFIT  company.  With most of these “Free Websites” you are effectively leasing the right to use them and many of their features.  If you transfer to another Host, you can loose half of all of your hard branding work, contact information, store options, etc.  Oh, please; say it isn’t so!!

Let Brandesigns Web Solutions help you.  We will walk you through the daunting process of taking control of your domain and website and release the chains of this hostage situation.