Hold on to the Gold – Choosing the Right Registrar & the Registrar from Hell

Hi,
Sorry for the interuption in service – the web site was down for a few hours. iPower, the registrar for this domain erroneously changed the nameservers of all of my sites effectively disabling them. This was not their first mistake. But TheDomainHunter.com is back ready to bring you more domain news you can profit with.

You’ve searched and found the gold nugget domain that will bring you profits. Now you need to go to a registrar and register it. But you need to pick the right registrar.

When I first started domaining I was attracted to the low prices of iPower for registering domain names. At the time they were registering I think .info for $1.99 and .com for $3.99. I thought why pay $9.95 when I can spend less than half to get the same thing. Big, big, mistake.

What a domainer needs from a registration company is fast registrations, easy management, both individual and bulk management of all of your domains from one account, accurate billing and notification of all changes. (My recommendation is Godaddy), and easy methods to transfer or push domains.

iPower does none of this. You have to sign in to each domain individually to do anything. That might not be a problem if you have one or two domains and but if you have many domains that can turn out to be really clumbersome. For a year they promised a unified management panel where I could manage all of my domains through one account.

Well it turns out their idea of a unified management panel is quite different – yes you can send them money to renew the domains from one account but for everything else you need the individual logins. But of course since they moved all of my accounts to their centralized management panel they said they needed to send me new passwords (which I haven’t received yet).

I wanted to change the nameservers to my parking company (why give them the parking revenue). When I called their support (It’s always at least and hour on hold) they told me that I can’t change DNS servers it has to be done by their support people!

This morning when I discovered thedomainhunter wasn’t up due to their mistake they told me the domain was locked and they would have to wait for someone to unlock it before they could change it. However the support person sent me another password and another website to go to where I was able to change it myself! (Still waiting for that phone call from iPower.)

So why do I tell you this cautionary tale? I think I’ve probably made all of the mistakes that can be made by a beginning domainer along with finding some particularly profitable paths. I want you to avoid the pitfalls and have the successes.

The reason that I stopped using iPower about a year ago is an important one for you. iPower is what I will call an indirect registrar or a reseller of other registrars’ services. If you go to a place like GoDaddy and register your name they register it for you. Not with iPower, when you register with them more than likely you will be registering it “really” with Tucows, or Wild West, or someone else – whoever iPower got the best contracts with this year.

So what does this mean if you are registering with iPower? When I was using them it went like this – you fill out the registration form at iPower, they charge your credit card for the domain, then they send you an email that says your domain is registered. Then from a few to 24 hours later you get a confirmation that the domain was registered – but once in a while they would send an email saying there was a problem registering the name and you lost the name.

There was a name I particularly wanted and didn’t want to lose it through a problem in registering at iPower. So as a test I went to iPower and registered the domain and got the email telling me I registered it. Then I went to GoDaddy where I did a whois. It showed the domain as still available! So I registered it at GoDaddy and it was safely placed in my account. A call later with iPower confirmed that it takes them up to 24 hours to “really” register the domain. I guess they aren’t “really” registering it they are forwarding your request for registration to the real registrar that they have contracted with hence the delay. It’s probably the same with all resellers- so check the specifies first. The specific situation and specific time lag might have changed with iPower in the year since I was registering with them, but I kind of doubt it.

You remember the other requirement when you are looking for a good registrar – that the transfer or push process when you sell a domain be quick and easy. With GoDaddy it is – a few emails for the security codes and its done within a few hours. iPower support told me that they had to get a notorized statement from me and a notorized statement from the person that I was selling the domain to! Imagine how much trouble and time that would take.

If you’ve spent your time and effort locating domain gold don’t risk it by trying to save a few dollars. The registrar I use is GoDaddy. They are fast, safe, they have great telephone support, and I’ve not had any problems with them. The cost difference now between them and the lowest priced reseller is so small now it’s just not worth it. Go to “>GoDaddy you’ll be happy you did.

All the best,
Ted Sudol
TheDomainHunter

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