Domain name registration and hosting services

A domain name is effectively your company’s identity on the Internet. It’s worth considering not only how the domain represents your company, but also how easy it is to remember for people wanting to return to your site. See the entry for Domain Names on Wikipedia for a complete definition.

Registering a Domain Name

Unless you are already familiar with domain names and associated naming schemes, please take a look at the notes below regarding domain name geography. If you would like to register a new domain name, please give us a call on 0845 5082719 or email us at Sales@encryptec.net.

Transferring a Domain Name

If your domain name has already been registered through another organisation, it is usually a relatively trivial operation to transfer the domain to Encryptec and something we do not charge for. Please note however that your current domain name hoster may try to charge you an exit fee.

Charges

We charge a single hosting fee per domain based on where they originate, there are no charges to transfer domains in or out. If the domain is UK based, we charge £5 per year, and if the domain is US based, we charge £10 per year. If you wish to register domains in other countries, then typically we (or you) will need to register the domain through agents who are based in that country and fees required will be specified by that agent.

Domain name geography

Every domain name implicitly shows the location of the company it represents. Unfortunately this can be confusing when companies choose to opt for a specific look, over technical correctness. Domain names generally end with a two digit code that indicates which country the names apply to. For example UK based domain names end in .uk, French names .fr, German names .de and so on. An authoritative list of country codes can be found on the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) web site.

US based domain names

As the home of the Internet, US based domains names started off as special cases and don’t follow these rules. We have for example .com (commercial entities) .gov (US government) .mil (US military) etc, many of these have since been termed gTLD’s (generic Top Level Domains) and are supposed to represent organisations with no geographical dependence. That said, there is still a perception that many of these names refer to US organisations, and indeed the term .com of often synonymous with the boom and bust style of Internet company prevalent in the mid to late 1990′s. The current list of available gTLD’s can be found on IANA’s gTLD page

Domain name Hosting

In order for people to be able to send you email and view your web pages, the Internet needs to know where your Internet mailbox is and where your web server is. The company hosting your domain name are responsible for providing a service (to the Internet) that provides this information as and when required.

Things to consider when choosing a company to host your domains

• How much will the initial registration cost ?
• How much will the company charge you for additional services ?
• How much will the company charge you if / when you want to move your Domain(s) elsewhere ?
• How reliable is the company’s underlying Internet Infrastructure ?

It is worth remembering that if their Domain name resolution service becomes unavailable, so will all your email and web services !

Summary

• Effectively there is no registration fee, but you need to pay for one year’s hosting in advance. (note that after a domain has been registered this fee is non-refundable)
• You may transfer your domain at any time provided that your service fees are paid up-to-date, but there is no pro-rata refund for transferring mid-way through an annual term.
• Encryptec run a number of name resolution servers in parallel to ensure maximum availability.

Information specific to UK domain names

We provide a registration and hosting service for UK domain names, to order a UK domain name please call 0845 5082719. Charges to host a UK domain name are £5 per annum for a minimum of one year, registration fees are included in this price. Typically domains are registered within minutes of an order being placed.

Our charges will not change unless our base charges from Nominet UK change.

If you have any problems with your domain hosting service or are dissatisfied with our domain hosting service you may transfer the domain to an alternative registrar of your choice at any time by calling 0845 5082719. All UK domain names are controlled by a “not-for-profit” organisation called “Nominet” to whom you enter into a contract when you register a UK domain name. You can read their terms and conditions of domain registration here.

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