Business Website Designers - Domain registration for your business website

To have a live website, you must first register a "domain".  A domain is the core name of your website.  In our case, our domain is "businesswebsitedesigners.com.au". So the first step is to buy your domain and have it registered to your name.  We offer this service without markup. 

Domain registration costs at most $50.00 for 2 years. For ".au" domains, this cost is $40.00 for 2 years.

It involves a "domain registrar" to handle, which we can take care of for you (we are not domain registrars, we just know the most affordable and secure domain registrars in Australia).  And unlike many website designers, we will register it in your name, so that if you ever need to do something with your domain, you can...and you won't need to come to us to do it (but you can if you want to).

Domain registration is the process whereby a person purchases a domain name, such as "businesswebsitedesigners.com.au".  The domain is paid for and registered by the domain registrar and is owned by the Registrant.  Its a little convoluted, but its a simple concept.  Only accredited companies are permitted to be registrars and they must be certified by several bodies that regulate domain name purchasing and registration.  These registrars register domains on your behalf and retain records and certain settings to ensure your domain is operable and secure.

Business Website Designers are not registrars.  We utilise the services of accredited companies to register a domain on your behalf, without any markup.  There are different costs, depending upon the "TLD" of the domain you wish to purchase.  The "TLD" is the part of the domain name at the end, such as ".com.au" or ".com" or ".net".  The costs for registering a domain are:

These prices are not set by us, but by the main domain registry services we utilise on your behalf.

Some Tips on Domain Registration

If you wish to handle your own domain registration, that's not a problem at all.  However, there are some things you should look out for and be aware of when registering your own domain name.  These things are easy to miss and can have serious ramifications down the track.

1. There are specific rules regarding owning a .com.au domain - you must own that business name (or company name) or otherwise have a valid entitlement to use it.
2. Your domain name carries quite an amount of weight with search engines.  If a websearch is done that exactly matches your domain name, you will get preference on that search.
3. If you choose to register your own domain, that's fine - but be careful of "cheap" registrars.  Domains can be hijacked (stolen) and it almost invariably occurs on "cheap" registrars.
4. You will need to renew your domain - if you paid $37.95 for 2 years, you will need to renew it at the end of those 2 years.  Lapsed domains can be purchased by someone else and you would lose your domain name AND any search engine rankings you had for that domain name.
5. For many Australian surfers, the ".com.au" TLD carries far more weight and respectability - more so than a ".com" or a ".net.au" - getting .com.au at the end of your domain matters.
6. If you plan to host with Business Website Designers, registering your domain is separate to EVERYTHING else.  We can handle your hosting, emails, forwarding and all the other stuff domain registrars will try to upsell to you.