Cheap domain registration?

[Pedja]

http://www.domainsarefree.com/

I am reading their terms of service and it seems ok. Anyne tried this?

[Buddha]

Interesting ... I'll report back if I try it. Hope you do the same.

[Jonathan]

Doesn't appear to be ICANN accredited? (isn't this something important? can't remember )

[Frank Hagan]

Looks like they are reseller under "Globat, LLC" through Tucows, an accredited registrar. This is from their TOS:

1. In this Registration Agreement ("Agreement") "Registrant", "you" and "your" refers to the registrant of each domain name registration, "we", "us" and "our" refers to Tucows.com Co., and "Services" refers to the domain name registration services provided by us as offered through Globat, LLC, the Registration Service Provider ("Reseller").

I tried using http://www.whois.sc/domainsarefree.com but it is returning an error so I can't see how long they have been in business. A Google search showed messages from people who registered with them back in 2000, so it looks like they have been around a while.

[Amitabh]

Look at this:

http://whois.webhosting.info/domainsarefree.com

Creation date: 01 Nov 1998 00:00:00
Expiration date: 31 Oct 2005 00:00:00

[J-G]

zFYI - whois.sc is back

and as for domainsarefree.com, whois.sc says (among other things):

ICANN Registrar: ENOM, INC.
Created: 01-nov-1998
Expires: 31-oct-2005
Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK

"globat" appears to be a fat hosting company.

[Amitabh]

I am also wondering what kind of server they have to host 5,680 domains on a single server.

Reverse IP Lookup: IP hosts 5,680 domains

[Frank Hagan]

That's the case at a lot of these large web hosts! 5,000 domains on a single server ... yikes!

I think I'll get a VPN account here and enlarge my customer base to 400 or so clients ... wait, if I had 400 clients, I wouldn't be worried about my "day job" ending soon!

[NoSoMo]

I know the post is old but....www.cheap-domain-name-registrar.com is who I use. 9.95 a yr for .com and 6.95 a yr for .us

[rsowen]

"Free domain name with web hosting" means that they register the name for you. When they register someone else's domain name, they might just own it. When that happens, transfer of ownership to you or transfer to another registrar isn't guaranteed, and resale of the domain name after it starts drawing traffic -- the one that doesn't belong to you -- to a porn peddler isn't an impossibility. This is not a hypothetical story. It happened to me with another organization that is now out of business.

Re. $3.99 domain name registration, that is only for the first year. Nobody stays in business by giving away something that isn't free for them to provide. The financial loss this year means that they must make that much more unit contribution next year to break even. If they don't make up for it next year, they will go bust -- that is a certainty. That is, the future holds two outcomes for the registrant: a higher future price, or a company that folds and leaves you stuck with a mess to clean up in trying to regain control of your domain name.