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What is a domain? How to pick one for your business
A domain is your own short name on the internet — like yourbusiness.com. Instead of a long address nobody can remember, people type one name and land straight on your site. Here’s what it costs, how to choose well, and the traps.
What you’re actually buying
You don’t buy a domain outright — you register it, one year at a time, through a company called a registrar. As long as you keep renewing, it’s yours and nobody else can use it. Stop renewing and it eventually goes back on the market. Two practical consequences: the yearly renewal matters more than the first-year price, and the name should be registered to you, not to whoever set it up for you — if a web company ever holds your domain hostage, that’s how it happened.
What it really costs
A normal .com runs roughly $10–20 a year at honest registrars (as of this writing, wholesale-style registrars list .com around $11/year — we checked live pricing while building our own domain tools). Two exceptions to know about:
- First-year promos. A “$0.99 domain” usually renews at the full price or higher from year two. Always look up the renewal price before buying — it’s the number you’ll actually pay forever.
- Premium names. Short or common words — think plumber.com — are resold at premium prices that can run to hundreds or thousands per year. A registrar will mark these as “premium.” For a local business, they’re almost never worth it: smithplumbingaustin.com does the same job for $12.
How to pick a good one
Aim for
- Your business name, plain: brasscapplumbing.com
- .com first — it’s what people type on autopilot
- Short enough to say over the phone
- Easy to spell after hearing it once
Avoid
- Hyphens and numbers (“is that the digit 4 or f-o-r?”)
- Creative spellings customers will get wrong
- Trendy endings if .com is free — you’ll forever say “no, not .com”
- Names so generic they could be anyone
The phone test settles most debates: say the address out loud to someone once, and see if they can type it right. Your domain gets said on the phone, painted on the truck, and printed on the card — it has to survive all three.
Three small things worth doing
- Turn on WHOIS privacy (usually free) — otherwise your name and contact details are published in the public domain records, and the spam calls follow.
- Turn on auto-renew — an expired domain takes your website and email down with it, and re-catching a lapsed name can cost real money.
- Keep the login somewhere safe — the registrar account that holds your domain is the deed to your address.
Or skip all of it
Speedy Sites customers get their domain found, set up and renewed as part of the plan — and it stays yours, transferable to you any time you ask. $0 today, $99/month after a 30-day trial.
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