Do any of you have experience of buying internet domain names?

I’ve a couple of ideas and on searching the domains do appear to be available…on “uniregistery.com”

No experience personally – are these people in a position to hold the rights to sell? With the $ offer price, is there a typical / minimum value?

I buy mine via godaddy – I put in what I want, and if free I buy it…

It’s easy.

Plenty of other ways of buying domain names.

I don’t geddit, how godaddy / 123reg/ etc etc can own the name, but there you go!

DrP

Are they previously registered domains or ‘new’ ones OP?

Ah, yes perhaps not entirely “new” then if the status is

” .CO.UK is listed for sale!”

Someone is ahead of me and hoping to make a mint!

I used 123.reg. Type in what I want, it tells me whether it’s available and if so, the price. If not it suggests alternatives or asks if I want to make a bid.

Just plug in what you want there and take a look. Dead easy.

Unless it’s an existing company name/trademark then anyone can register a domain name so long as it follows the naming rules. Actually even if it is an existing company name you could do it but it’s unlikely that your stake would be recognised – this happened fairly regularly when the WWW was starting up.

So you’d be unlikely to be able to register whsmith.co.uk but you could register willsmithfireplaces.co.uk or whatever so long as it was available.

Run whois against the domain name to see if it is genuinely registered.

whois whsmith.co.uk

Domain name:
whsmith.co.uk

Registrant:
WH Smith High Street Limited

Trading as:
WH Smith High Street Limited

Registrant type:
UK Limited Company, (Company number: 6560339)

Registrant’s address:
Greenbridge Road
Swindon
Wiltshire
SN3 3RX
United Kingdom

Data validation:
Nominet was able to match the registrant’s name and address against a 3rd party data source on 10-Dec-2012

Registered through:
NetNames Limited
URL: http://www.netnames.co.uk

Registrar:
Ascio Technologies Inc. Denmark ? filial af Ascio Technologies Inc. USA t/a Ascio Technologies inc [Tag = ASCIO]
URL: http://www.ascio.com

Relevant dates:
Registered on: before Aug-1996
Expiry date: 23-Sep-2017
Last updated: 22-Sep-2015

Registration status:
Registered until expiry date.

Name servers:
ns1.netnames.net
ns2.netnames.net
ns5.netnames.net
ns6.netnames.net

Ta. Will investigate more.

I used to for the company I work for (both the actual domain names we needed for a service + various similar sounding ones to stop rival services/nefarious types from using them). I always used to do it via Freeola but only because we already had an account with them. Ultimately there are different official name registrars for each domain (.com, .co.uk etc.) which they will register your request with (or you can do it directly but generally easier to go through a 3rd party if multiple top level domains).

There’s also different costs (usually annual) for each domain type (e.g. .com is a fair bit more expensive than .co.uk).

Any value over the registration cost is if someone one else offers to buy it from you (domain squatting is much harder these days though, for commercial domains you generally need to prove a company registration if another company with that name (or similar) challenges your ownership.

Never heard of uniregistry.com though and the website doesn’t even load properly for me so I’d avoid them personally.

It has been known for some of the less scrupulous sites to immediately register domains you search on and then up the price when you then decide to buy.

I never search for a domain unless I’m goign to buy it there and then rather than go away and think about it.

Also, think about all the .co.uk/.com/.biz variations in advance too – which ones will you want.

Also…as soon as your domain name ownership runs out (i.e you don’t renew) then your pointless domain name is suddenly bought up, and you suddenly receive an email from ANother company selling you your £2.99/year name for £300….

It’s happened to me several times on sites I buy, never care about, and let lapse… funny how quickly they are bought up….!

DrP

I can recommend https://www.mythic-beasts.com/domains for domain purchasing, a small British hosting company that also resells domains and doesn’t do anything stupid but just sell you the domain (and have an auto-renew button so they don’t expire!)

I’ve used 123-reg. I expect it’s just as simple with whoever you use, just a few clicks and you’re done – no harder than buying bike bits from *insert your desired supplier here*

Thanks for the recommendation, Ross 😉

Not come across Uniregistry before, but from a quick look, when it says “Registered, may be available to purchase” it means “Somebody else owns it, and they’ve expressed no interest whatsoever in selling but you could make an unsolicited offer”.

I don’t geddit, how godaddy / 123reg/ etc etc can own the name, but there you go!

They don’t: the different top-level domains are managed by different organisations (e.g. .uk is managed by Nominet, .com is managed by Verisign). They then allow other companies (such as 123, GoDaddy or Mythic Beasts) to sell names within that space to end users, but all those companies have access to the same set of available names (there’s actually often a further intermediate layer of reseller so that companies don’t have to have agreements with all the different registries invidually).

So like many things, whoever you buy it through, you end up with the same product, but the service and pricing structure may be very different. For example, some registrars charge a transfer-out fee to lock you in to them, others offer heavily discounted first year pricing which rises significantly in subsequent years.

I’ve used 123-reg for years. The choice of registrar isn’t vitally important, so long as you get someone credible.

I use Vidahost and I’ve been very happy with their service.

https://domains.google/#/

I went with https://www.gandi.net/ cos it says “No bullshit” next to their logo (and they were recommended to me by a local hosting company).

While listening to 6 music this morning – a rare pleasure – I thought that I might provide this as a public service:

http://www.whenisshaunkeavenyonholiday.com

It’s pretty cheap…

Dont do what we did . Registered a Trade Mark without securing the .com / .co.uk rights at the same time .
2 weeks later when we wanted the domain name low and behold someeone else had bought it the day after the trade mark was publicised.
Live and learn apparently

You’ve got prior claim to the name so could probably get the hosting company to release that if you asked. “Cybersquatting” isn’t the absolute it used to be.

Thanks for the recommendation, Ross

For clarification I’m just a happy customer and am in no way expecting a discount on my next hosting bill.

😉

Also, don’t be surprised when your 99p domain jumps to 11.99 come renewal time. Not the end of the world but thought it worth mentioning. Especially if you’ve got a lot. You can transfer them, but there’s minor ballache so…