There are free TLDs used for testing specifically like .tk. Using those for your website will make it look less professional. Extremely cheap ‘almost free’ TLDs are less memorable than .com for example. Hence, they are unpopular and users don’t find them trustworthy.
Paid domains make your website look respectable. But in this article we would like to give you a few hints on how to save some money.
How to register a domain for free?
1. Purchase a hosting package that includes a free domain registration
It’s an often case for hosting companies to offer free domain registration along with buying their hosting packages for a certain period (usually half a year or more). This is the best way of getting a free domain. You get your fancy domain name and don’t have to pay for it.
The most popular free TLDs
.co.uk .eu .co .com .net .biz .info .us
Apart from the most popular TLDs a hosting company might offer regional or generic TLDs of all sorts. Feel free to check our list of TLDs here with paid and free options.
2. Use a website builder
Companies, that offer website builders (tools that allow to create a website with no need for HTML, CSS, JS, PHP knowledge) might offer a domain along with their product as well. There’s usually a catch here though. For example, you have a company called ‘sitename’ and ordered a website builder at ‘constructor.com’. Your domain will most likely look as ‘sitename.constructor.com’ making it a sub-domain of constructor.com.
We do not recommend going with that option if you intend to promote this website and put some serious SEO effort into it. It will not look neither professional nor trustworthy as a .com/net/org etc. domain would. With all that said, if you are a beginner and intend to run a blog or a simple online presence website – you might rather go with this option and save some money.
3. Various services
Companies, that registered a short domain name with a known TLD sometimes offer free sub-domain either alone (like subdomain.com) or along with their services (like Wix and Weebly). This option, just as the previous one is reasonable only for small personal online presence. If you are building up a website for business purposes, we do advise choosing a more conventional one.
4. Scammers
There are a lot of ways to scam, steal a website, hack it, etc. All the usual warnings here. Don’t pass full control over your website to any third party, be careful with payment details of your own and your customers, take advantage of security services (SSL certificates, antivirus software, etc.) and so on.
