Hosting in Germany

Why so bloody difficult?

[madmatt69]

Hey everyone,

Just registered a .de domain to find out I can't host it on my server in North America (some technical thing). Ok, no prob I was planning on hosting it in Germany anyways.

So I've gone through the larger ones (1x1, strato, etc) and all of them are requiring me to transfer my domain to them before I can get web space!

Crazy, as it's completely unnecessary. Why would I pay to transfer a domain over when I just bought it. I just need webspace to point it to.

Any hosts that don't require this? I found a couple, only to do a whois and find they're actually located in egypt, denmark, or switzerland.

Is there something I'm missing? Or some kind of law or regulation? Seems far to difficult to just sign up for a hosting account somewhere.

Any help would be much appreciated -
Matt

[ThomasB]

Matt, you need Nameservers in 2 different class-c nets, that's the only special technical requirement for DE domains as far as I know. I have quite a few domains hosted in the US and nobody complains. And you need a registered adress in Germany of course to register the domain.

[madmatt69]

I'm totally not technical in that respect -is it something my host can do?

I thought it was important to have the site physically located in Germany, as far as how Google and other SE's determine the location of a site. I know .de should be enough, but ideally I'd like to host there too.

[ThomasB]

Matt, ask your host if he has nameservers in 2 different class-c nets and if that's the problem. If he doesn't have them, you might look into NS services, which usually have NS in 2 different class-c networks.

[jez_kewler]

you need a german address for a german domain?
no - me not....

[tschild]

The domain guidelines of DENIC [denic.de] do say that if the domain holder has not got an address in Germany the administrative contact (admin-c) must have a German address (to enable legal documents being served). See section VIII of the domain guidelines.

Hosting in Germany is usually set up so that the domain registration is part of a package with hosting - i.e. when you want to register a .de domain you don't register the domain then look for hosting but rather you first pick a hosting company then register the domain through them. Unlike registrars for gTLD, DENIC is not a for-profit company but a cooperative whose shareholders are mainly web hosting companies - which is why directly registering a .de domain through DENIC is much more expensive than registering the domain through a hosting company.