Reasons to not use a host company for domain registration

[DXL]

I normally use a particular Arizona company to register domains, for a while I switched to a company that primarily does hosting (the fastest growing host company) because they were offering first year registration at $2.95. They've since raised the price to $6.95, but its still competitive so I continued to use them.

I had at several occasions in which I tried to register an expired domain name, got an order confirmation email, only to find out that someone else registered the same domain a few days after I tried. I thought maybe they were isolated incidents, bugs. Last week I registered a domain that a client let expire, we breathed a sigh of relief. Several days later, another company had ownership of it. The clueless tech support at the host company couldn't offer a real explanation of why my registration didn't go through, and how someone else managed to acquire it DAYS after I tried.

In short, if a domain is valuable, stick to the main two or three domain registrars, and do NOT go through a company known primarily for hosting. You probably won't get the domain, and their support staff are utterly useless when you confront them about it.

[gpmgroup]

If you have your registration somewhere else and your DNS with at third party then changing hosting company or moving registrar is very easy ;) Simply enter an authcode or a new IP address and the change over is usually transparent to users.

[jtara]

I'm a big advocate as well of keeping your registration, hosting, and DNS all seperate. It gives you maximum flexibility in the event of a failure of a provider, or any kind of dispute.