Buying a co.uk domain name

What should I look for in a registrar

[johnathome]

I would like to buy a .co.uk domain name. The .com name is already taken by a reseller, and they want $800 for it.

The .co.uk is about £3 as far as i can see.

My question is what company to buy it from? Does it not make any difference?

There's <snip> a plethora of companies.

Do i just use the cheapest?

<edit>What should I look for besides price?<edit>

TIA

Confused

[edited by: Webwork at 12:57 pm (utc) on Dec. 6, 2005]
[edit reason] Per Charter: Forum focus is on general education [/edit]

[Live_Lead]

We are a UK based businesss and operate networks of domains across the UK, Spain, Italy, Holland, France and Germany.

My advice would be to use the same critera to assess a registrar in the UK as you would anywhere else.

There are a few good registration agents, and one that is extremly popular with domain owners and many average or poor registrars.

Nominet is the internet registry for .uk domain names.

[andye]

What should I look for besides price?<

a few thoughts:

* do they look likely to stay in business?
* how good is the support?
* who provides DNS, you or them?
* hidden costs, e.g. they charge you if you want to transfer the domain to another registrar, they charge you if you want to manage your own DNS, they charge you if you want web forwarding...
* you might want to register the domain with the same firm that runs your web hosting and email, it can make life simpler if you only have to deal with one company.

hth, a.

[submitx]

Here are a few good ones:

Godaddy.com
Moniker.com
register.com

[johnathome]

Good answers!

Hadn't thought about hidden costs, guess i've got some more reading to do.

Cheers

John

[Elmo]

Uk domains are registered for 2 years and cost £5+VAT (£5.88) if you are a member of Nominet (the official UK domain body) so any company that offers domains for less than this going to make a loss unless they have other ways of clawing it back somehow.

One of the biggest companies that people use in the UK is 123-reg, they charge £0.18+VAT on top of the Nominet fee and have NO hiiden costs that I have found.

If you are going to register a lot of UK domains then you could become a member of Nominet yourself but it will cost you about £600+VAT

[johnathome]

Cheers Elmo, that's the one i was thinking of using :beerchug