Free domain registration
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.
We highly recommend not to purchase the cheapest hosting package. Usually, they come with a row of issues: the server is often down, the hardware is outdated, lousy and slow support, registration and payment errors, etc.
For your convenience, we have created a tool that can help you to choose the right hosting package for you just by answering a few simple questions.
CMS is a content management system. A lot of hosting providers offer so-called CMS optimized packages. However, this is a marketing trick because most CMSs do not have special software or hosting requirements.
Trial period is a period of time, usually from 7 to 30 days, during which you can use the hosting services for free to test them.
Moneyback policy allows the customer to receive a refund for his order within a certain period after the purchase.
OS means the operating system is installed on the server. We recommend to choose Linux hosting unless your website requires another OS.
Bulletproof hosting - it’s a type of service that allows to host almost any type of content, even the restricted one (adult content, warez, spam etc). Bulletproof hosting providers do not remove your content in case someone reports an abuse.
Unlimited hosting - refers to companies that provide packages with unlimited disk space, bandwidth, number of domains, databases or email accounts, etc. This is usually a marketing trick but sometimes you can find something worth a try.
Secure hosting - it’s a type of service when the hosting provider is mostly responsible for the security of the user’s account: updates the software installed on their servers, provides an antivirus and malware scanner, firewalls and basic anti-DDoS protection, etc.
DDoS-protected hosting - companies that provide packages that include anti-DDoS protection. These packages are considerably more expensive than regular ones. Nevertheless, they’re totally worth their price because the company will ensure that your website is secured from cyber attacks.
Most websites require MySQL and PHP installed on the server to work correctly. Almost all hosting providers support these technologies.
ASP.NET is a Microsoft web application development platform.
The more comfortable the control panel is, the easier will it be for you to change the website and hosting account settings.
Most hosting providers that are in TOP20 in our rating offer user-friendly control panels, such as cPanel, Plesk or DirectAdmin. That’s why we recommend to pay attention to other, more important parameters, while choosing a hosting provider.