Wait! If I buy something, isn’t it automatically mine forever?
In the majority of cases, yes, that’s true, and the question of how to make your purchase stay with you for a lifetime might sound weird. But the word “buy” in the expression of “buy a domain name” has a slightly different meaning. It means to rent. When a business pays for the domain, it’s a price for having the right to operate a website under this domain name for a specific period. When that period finishes, the domain expires, and you no longer own it.
To avoid the scenario of domain expirations, you should do something before the expiration or by the time it expires (that’s riskier).
Companies worldwide mark the day of their domain expiration not to forget to renew it before the registration date. By renewing the domain, you should understand paying the set price for your domain’s renewal service by the domain registrar. That price is presented to you before you register your domain for the first time, as it’s a necessary expense your business will have at least once a year.
If you fail to renew your domain on time, it goes public. This means any person interested in your domain (usually competitors or domain dealers) can acquire it. You guess the consequences of such a scenario, right? The name you have been working for, the brand awareness, and the image you constructed will all be transferred to the third party. Also, you will have to deal with all that hassle of finding a new domain and then convincing your customers that it’s still you under a new name.
Well, if it all works like that, how can I make my domain name stuck with my business forever?
Technically, and yet, there are no options for registering a domain name forever. Still, alternative options for the domain registration process can bring you very close to owning a domain for a lifetime.
The options are organizing the automatic renewal for your domain, registering the domain for a significantly longer period than a year, or letting the web hosting organize the renewal of your domain name itself.
Read below the details on how to organize each of the mentioned processes.
Option 1: Buy a web hosting and stay with it forever
Registering a domain name and buying web hosting are two different services, and the latter will also allow you to have a domain for a “lifetime.” The majority of the domain registrars will provide you options for buying both. If you buy web hosting, the provider company will also let you choose a domain name that will not need any renewal.
Before we move on to clarify this moment, let’s briefly explain the difference between the two.
A domain name is a beautiful and meaningful combination of letters you choose to put instead of your website’s IP address. It’s the address of your website. For registering a domain name, you should head to domain availability checkers, and if your preferred domain is free, you can register it right away.
Web hosting is the space in the web server which is dedicated to storing your website’s data. That is to say, every website has web hosting. Due to it, users can browse the website’s full content.
So, if you are launching a website, you will anyway need both services. If you buy it from the same provider, they will usually offer you a “forever domain,” which usually lasts until you switch to another web hosting provider. After that, you will automatically switch to the yearly renewal model.
In exchange for that, you will pay a very affordable monthly subscription fee. At Billioname, you can even register for a hosting web package for free.
Option 2: Choose auto-renewal when registering your domain
Another option-illusion for forgetting about the domain renewals is to set the auto-renewal function when registering the domain. You will need everything you normally do for other subscriptions:
- Attach your credit card details.
- Give your consent for a periodical renewal.
- Make sure to have the appropriate sum on your card when the renewal day approaches.
This method will free you from the renewal hassles and significantly reduce the risk of losing your domain to third parties. Even though you will have to pay for renewal every time, the convenience of this method can’t be underestimated. You can be sure your most important asset, your brand name, is firmly attached to you, and no other party can benefit from it if you happen to forget to renew it.
The good news is that most domain registrars do not add much to the registration fee when setting the renewal price. There might even be domains, which will have no renewal fee. Usually, such domains include country-specific TLDs to support domestic businesses. For example, Billioname does not charge renewal fees for the .am Armenian domains.
Other than .am, there is a vast list of TLDs with their renewal fees you can choose from in Billionaire.
Head to the complete list of the website to find the renewal fee for your specific domain.
Option 3 (compromising): Register a domain name for ten years
Compared to the first two options, the 10-year registration of the domain name is the least comfortable option. You still need to remember the renewal date, and there is a particular risk of losing it to outsiders.
However, compared to yearly renewal, ten years can be considered a lifetime. You will be free of renewal hassles for a significant period. The ten years is the maximum duration of domain registration that the main coordinating body ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) allows.
You can choose the option for ten years when completing the standard steps of your domain registration.
To sum up, the domain renewal itself is not technically complex, time-consuming, or expensive. It’s simple, but most issues of the domain renewals are connected by the domain owners’ failure to keep track of the domain expiration dates and the warning emails from the domain provider. The necessity of the “forever domains” is mainly connected to eliminating that risk and hassle from the domain owners’ lives. In this regard any of the above-mentioned three methods will come in extremely handy for you.
