Thread: is that a sound idea?

Not really.
Never reg a domain and host it at the same place.
I would not even do this with a registrar like godaddy or namecheap.

I never do that either, but I'm not sure what reasons I would name for why is it risky. Any ideas?

By default, it's never good to have all eggs in one basket, so I guess that's reason 1.

Originally Posted by iowadawg

Never reg a domain and host it at the same place.
I would not even do this with a registrar like godaddy or namecheap.

The words of a wise man.

I don't want to ever have my domain registrar host my websites or vice versa. I don't care who the company is, I'll never do it. Anyone else can of course do whatever they want.

Sure there are plenty of companies who provide that service and seem to be reliable and stable, but you never really know what's going on behind the scenes. Many people in the past have been burned badly and learned their lesson the hard way, because they trusted a company with too much.

If you want company names I'll dig some up, but basically if your webhost | domain registrar goes down or out of business and you just want to change your nameservers etc to keep your site online, you can't. Your site will stay down / offline until they come back online, if they do. Some of the pro domainers here probably know a story or two about these kind of things.

What if your webhost / registrar decides they really like your site and hey they want to keep it ? So they change the domain registration details and physically lock you out of your site so you can't get back in.. You think that could never happen ? Guess again.

What if you can't move your domain to another registrar because your current registrar went out of business and they don't give a f*!# about your little site because they have their own problems to deal with... well maybe your site is just gone. And if you didn't make backups, then you are really screwed. All in one day you could have no domain, no hosting, no access to any files = no more website.

Yes I know, making backups should be an essential part of running a site, but you would be surprised how many people don't even think about it until 'after' they need to. Hmm, wish I spent 5 minutes to do a db backup. Sure I've done it too.

While people may think that it could never happen to them, well it has happened already, many times to many people. Learn from other people's mistakes and as memenode stated, it's never good to have all eggs in one basket.

Free domain registration with purchasing web hosting was another good scam that some people have been burned with in the past, as they found out later, the domain is registered to the hosting company and it stays with them. Forever. Not all webhosts will do that to you of course, but you always need to be careful that you keep control over your domains. If 'your' domain is not registered in 'your' name it's basically not yours. You are relying on the person/company who it is registered to, not to screw you bigtime.

Always have a backup plan so if something goes bad to make sure you aren't just another victim in some horror story that people still refer to years later.. By intentionally seperating your web hosting apart from your domain registration you have at least 'some' kind of control, for that day when you might really need it.

So yeah, just like the matrix, it's all about control. Don't give it away.

Great post Mike. You make some excellent points about the risks associated with registering your domain and hosting your website with the same company. Also, in case people missed it in your post, a really great point was about the need to back up your website on some periodic basis is critical to protecting your website investment. Some hosting companies do backups but their terms of service don't require them to and if you miss the fact that your site is down for a few days, their daily backup isn't going to help as they overnight each night. If you make frequent changes to your website (or blog), then backup more frequently or risk loosing the changes in since previous backup. If you blog frequently, find out how to backup your blog as you may have hundreds or thousands of hours invested in creating content and for the little effort it takes to back it up, why risk loosing your content. Blogger and Wordpress make this very easy. I am sure other popular blog platforms are the same.

Think it's better to keep your eggs in different baskets.

I have seen many situations where a client was shocked to learn that their precious domain name was not registered to them and they have no control over their domain. From my perspective, it is absolutely essential that a client get the domain transferred to their own registrar account before we start to build a new site. Most hosting companies will do this without any resistance, but a few drag their feet or do not respond. I advise the client to cite a new corporate policy about the registering of domain names.

I don't really have an issue with a domain name that is registered at the same company as it is hosted, such as in the case of GoDaddy. My issue is when the domain name is not registered to the client and not in their full control.

I ran into a situation last year where the designer who built a site years ago had the domain name registered in the client's name, but it was in the designer's GoDaddy account. The client had no idea that they did not have control of their domain. They charged the client $100 to push it to the client's GoDaddy account. There may have been some merit to this, because the designer had been paying the registration fees for several years. The scary part was the question of what would have happened if they had not paid the registrations.

Originally Posted by memenode

I never do that either, but I'm not sure what reasons I would name for why is it risky. Any ideas?

By default, it's never good to have all eggs in one basket, so I guess that's reason 1.

The bigger issue is the domain registration. Usually, the hosting companies are second tier resellers. So, it doesn't make sense to give them control when you can go to the head of the beast yourself.

Top 30 Largest ICANN Registrars

Rank-Market Share-Domains

1 GO DADDY 32.384% 38,519,104
2 ENOM 8.663% 10,303,645
3 TUCOWS 6.732% 8,007,860
4 NETWORK SOLUTIONS 5.181% 6,162,641
5 SCHLUND+PARTNER 4.396% 5,228,215
6 MELBOURNE IT 3.222% 3,832,601
7 WILD WEST DOMAINS 2.734% 3,252,362
8 RESELLERCLUB.COM 2.173% 2,585,065
9 REGISTER.COM 1.907% 2,268,408
10 MONIKER 1.827% 2,173,009
11 KEY-SYSTEMS 1.485% 1,766,552
12 FASTDOMAIN.COM 1.352% 1,607,680
13 XINNET.COM 1.262% 1,501,202
14 Onamae.com 1.123% 1,335,493
15 NET.CN 0.954% 1,135,226
16 FABULOUS.COM 0.953% 1,133,594
17 OVH 0.946% 1,125,550
18 DOTSTER 0.921% 1,095,846
19 PSI-USA 0.731% 869,051
20 ASCIO 0.716% 852,212
21 STRATO AG 0.706% 839,625
22 ONLINENIC 0.690% 820,272
23 NAME.COM 0.684% 813,667
24 DIRECTNIC 0.635% 755,101
25 GANDI 0.577% 686,113
26 DOMAINDISCOVER 0.554% 659,289
27 NAMEKING.COM 0.520% 618,632
28 DREAMHOST 0.507% 603,571
29 REGISTER.IT 0.464% 551,486
30 MARKMONITOR 0.451% 536,438

Source: Largest ICANN Registrars

I am a bit surprised that Network Solutions is still suckering people into paying an outrageous price for domains. Enom isn't much better.

I think Wild West Domains is actually Goddady's reseller program.

Wild West is owned by godaddy.

What always surprises me every time I see a list like this?
Where the heck is NAMECHEAP?

My son one time worked for a domain company that never made any lists, but they registered thousands of domains daily.
Made a scad of money until they got bought out by of all companies, Dell Computer.
Who then proceeded to just let this company die out.

NameCheap should be on there. I think they are an Enom reseller, so they could be rolled into Enom's numbers.