Over at the Tucows Blog, there’s a new article by Tucows CEO Elliot Noss titled Questions to Ask Before You Pick Your Domain Name Registrar. Here are the questions, each of which Elliot goes into further detail:
- What is the registrar’s primary business model?
- Does the registrar make transfers as easy as the rules allow?
- Do you allow for easy locking and unlocking of domain names?
- Does the registrar make it easy to opt-out of auto-renewals?
- Do the registrar tie domains to its services?
- Does the registrar offer Whois privacy? What are its privacy policies in general?
- What are the registrar’s policies on compliance issues like litigation, ownership disputes and WDRP?
- How easy is it to contact the registrar?
- What happens when my domain expires?
- Are the people selling you your domain name a registrar or a reseller?
If you’re thinking about registering a domain name anytime soon, this article is a worthwhile read.
Some of the terms and concepts covered in the article might be unfamiliar to you, but worry not: this week, I plan to write some articles explaining some of them. I hope that this will clear up some of the confusion about domain name registration.
One more thing: in the interest of full disclosure, I work for Tucows, a company that is a domain name registrar and for which Elliot Noss is the CEO.