What is a domain?  It’s the .com / .biz /.net address you type in to get to your website.

In today’s times, a company can’t survive without a website.  For many, it drives most of their business.  What if all of a sudden it went down?  Unfortunately, this happened to one of our clients last week, and it wasn’t because they were hacked.  They just simply forgot to renew their domain name.

To make matters worse, they couldn’t remember who owned the domain.  After many calls to support, they ended up being down for a solid week.  How would your company do if they lost their website for a week?  How much revenue would be lost?

What can you do to avoid these issues?

  • Make sure your company owns your domain name.
  • Know when your domain expires
  • Have your login information
  • Log in regularly

 

Make sure your company owns your domain name

Many new and smaller companies just let their marketing or web development company handle the domain registration.   While a simple solution there are pitfalls.  What if you need to let them go?  Will they still be around in 3-5 years?  Its best practice for the owner of the company to also own your domain.

If you don’t know where to start with this, I will include some reputable companies later in the post.

Know when your domain expires

Many people don’t want to deal with the hassle of renewing their domain yearly, so opt for 3 -5 year registrations.  This is often time a good idea because registrars offer great deals on that initial long-term registration.  With such long-term contracts it’s easy to forget that it is time to renew, so make sure you have it noted.

While registrars send reminder emails its not always foolproof, employees and email addresses change.  Or possibly you are not used to that company’s name popping up in your inbox, you may think its spam.

Others may think just because you have it set up to auto-renew that you are fine.  Credit cards expire, and fraudulent charges happen that make you switch your account numbers.

Have your login information

Who has the login information to your account?  As I mentioned in the last section, employees change but owners stay the same.  You need to make sure that your email address is associated with the account.  It’s better to spend a little time setting up an account upfront instead of scrambling when your site is down, and you don’t know who to call.

Login regularly

You don’t have to log in weekly or even monthly.  Just once or twice a year will do.  I recommend this for several reasons.  It will help you remember when your domain name expires.  It will also keep your account active.  Some registrars put your account in an inactive state after a certain period of time like 12 to 18 months without a login.  It gives you a chance to make sure your payment and contact information is correct.

If you aren’t sure where to start here is a list of registrars that you can check out.  I don’t endorse or receive any payment from any of these vendors.

Domain.com – www.domain.com

GoDaddy – www.godaddy.com

Namecheap – www.namecheap.com

Network Solutions – https://www.networksolutions.com

Once you select your registrar, sign up for an account.  This account allows you to purchase new domain names if you need them.  Or you can transfer the ownership of your existing domain name into your own account for safekeeping.

I hope that this helps save you some potential downtime.  If you need any help, feel free to reach out for our consulting services.  Happy domain hunting!