When signing up for a web hosting account, be sure to take advantage of promotional items. Many hosting companies offer free domain names to entice new customers to sign up. Along with your hosting, you should get a free domain name. A domain name costs around $10 a year. That means you’re getting a $10 discount up front on your hosting plan.

What if you want to change your web host?

Don’t worry, your domain name won’t stay with your hosting company. But you have to transfer your domain name to your favorite registrar (like GoDaddy or NameCheap) after you sign up for your hosting. The domain is free, we deliver it to you. You must have full control over the domain name. The only way to regain control is to request a transfer. Submit a support ticket to your hosting company, mentioning that you want the domain transferred to your registrar. They will revert with the transfer instructions.

Once the domain has been transferred, remember to change your domain nameservers to point to your servers. Otherwise, you will experience downtime.

A domain name can become a very valuable brand. So even though it’s offered to you for free, don’t just sign up for any domain name. Be sure to choose one that suits your business.

You can perform as many searches as you like on the web hosting site to see if the names you want are available. Try to choose domain names that contain your main keywords. For example, if you sell “basketball shoes”, you might want to register something like “basketball shoes dot com”. Always choose a dot com extension if it is available. A dot net or dot org will also work, but they are not really intended for commercial sites.

Once you have transferred the domain name to your registrar, you can change hosting companies at any time.

To do so, start by signing up for a new hosting account. Do not cancel your existing hosting account yet. Transfer all files and databases to the new server. Sometimes if you give the login details to the new company’s help desk, they might even transfer everything for you. Test the site on the new server. If all goes well, it’s time to make changes to the domain name servers (DNS).

Go to your registrar and make a request to change the DNS. You must modify at least two fields: the primary DNS and the secondary DNS. Once the changes are made, the site will be migrated. Please be patient and allow up to 48 hours for the information to update. If the domain name still points to your old server after 48 hours, check the DNS again and email your registrar to see what might have gone wrong.

Usually, when done correctly, the domain name will point to the new site within a few hours.