Domain Registration and Hosting

There are 2 services you need for an existing website:

• You need to register the domain.  A domain is your address.  http://www.cit-services.com is a domain.  Domain registration is cheap, somewhere between $9 and $20 a year depending on the company you choose as the registrar.  Registrar companies include Network Solutions and GoDaddy. About 5 companies have 90% of the registrations in the USA.
• You need someone to host your website.  Actually you can do it yourself if you have a server and a good internet connection ( DSL is a marginal internet connection ).  GoDaddy and some of the other Registrars also do hosting, but it is common to use separate companies.  Hosting can be inexpensive, $5 a month or several hundred dollars a month depending on your requirements.  Many website designers do their own hosting because they already have servers and high-speed internet connections.  I do not normally charge separately for hosting, it is bundled into a yearly fee with light maintenance.

If you choose to register your own domain, you have 100% control over your website, if you no longer like your website designer you can fire him.  If you no longer like your hosting company, you can find another. But if you forget to renew your registration, your website will go down.  If you ignore the situation for a few days then anyone can buy your domain and your only choice is to buy it back from them at whatever price they ask.  There are sharks that look for newly expired domains and charge thousands of dollars to their former owners who want them back.

I have the domain registrations for many of my customers.  I will never forget to renew them.  This means I have 100% control over these websites.  It works because I value my reputation as an ethical designer, and because I have someone I trust if I get hit by a truck.  Generally I tell customers that are very computer literate to register it themselves. If they are not computer experts or don't have the time, it is better for me to do it as there is much less risk of the domain expiring.