Too often I get phone calls from business owners who no longer own their domain names.
“How can this happen?” you ask. More easily than you realize. When you hire someone to develop your website, often they will be the one to register your domain name and sometimes they do it under their own name. You’ve just made your first big mistake.
Think about your car. When you bought your car, who’s name is on the title? If it’s not your name, you don’t own the car and whoever does can drive off with it at any time.
By having someone else register your domain under their name you are giving them the title to your domain. It doesn’t matter if the domain is www.yourbusinessname.com. They registered it in their name. They own it.
This might not be a problem if you are dealing with an ethical and long-lived web professional. But I live in the real world. And anything can happen in the real world. I might walk out my front door and get hit by a bus. What happens to your website now? You have no way of providing another web designer access to your domain name to keep your site up and running. You have no way to transfer that URL to another host provider or registrar.
Often businesses end up starting over from scratch.
That’s why I always have my clients – or help them – register their own domain name.
By registering your own domain, you own it. You have – and should keep in a secure location – the account ID and password along with the name and contact information for the registrar (the title company, in keeping with our car analogy.)
Want more information on registering a domain?
Click here to read “What Does My Web Hosting Company Do For My Business?“