Guide
How to get a domain name for your business
A domain name is your address on the web — yourbusiness.com. It is cheap, it takes ten minutes to register, and the one mistake that matters is letting someone else register it for you. Here is how to choose one, what it costs, and how to connect it to a website and email.
What a domain costs
A .com typically costs roughly $10–$25 a year. Some registrars discount the first year heavily and charge more on renewal, so check the renewal price, not just the first-year offer.
Unusual endings (.online, .site, .shop) can be very cheap in year one and expensive afterwards. Premium names — short, dictionary words — can cost hundreds or thousands to buy from their current owner.
How to choose one
Say it out loud. If you have to spell it on the phone, it is too complicated.
Use your business name, or your trade and town. People type what they remember.
Prefer .com where you can. It is what people assume. A country ending (.co.uk, .ca, .com.au) is a strong choice if you only serve that country.
Avoid hyphens and numbers. They are the parts people forget.
Check it is not someone's trademark. A name close to an existing business invites trouble.
Where to buy it
Any accredited registrar will do — the big names all sell the same domains. Choose on renewal price, whether privacy protection is included, and how easy the control panel is.
Buy it yourself, with your own login, even if someone else builds the site. You can give them access without giving them ownership.
Can you get a domain for free?
Sometimes, for the first year. Website builders such as Wix and Squarespace include a free domain with an annual plan; after year one you pay renewal. Free plans on builders use their own address (yourname.wixsite.com), which looks unprofessional on a van or a card.
There is no genuinely free .com. Anything advertised that way is bundled with something you pay for.
Register it in your name
This is the one thing that matters. If a designer or agency registers your domain in their name, they control your web address and your email. Businesses have lost years of customer traffic this way when a relationship ended.
Check who the registrant is, keep the login, and turn on auto-renew. An expired domain can be bought by someone else within weeks.
We register every client's domain in their own name. It is part of our published pricing.
Connect it to a website and email
Your registrar lets you point the domain at a website host (with a couple of DNS records) and set up email addresses like you@yourbusiness.com through a provider such as Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.
Email on your own domain looks more trustworthy than a free email address and keeps working if you ever change website.
Want to see what a site on your domain would look like? The free website builder shows you in about ten seconds.