How do you know if your domain name registration quote is the best deal? With prices varying from $25 to almost $150 in Australia for one two year domain, what should a sensible business consider when deciding on the right price to pay for their online identity?

The importance of choosing the right domain name can’t be stressed enough. After all, it is the name above your shop, the first words your customers will see. But beyond registering control of the domain so you can point it to your website, what else is there? Why does the same domain cost so much more when registered with one company instead of another?

In Australia, for example, the wholesale cost of registering a domain name is a cheap $19.50 + GST for a .com.au or .net.au. For other forms of domain; such as .org.au, .com, .info, etc, the fees vary and may be cheaper still. These prices are set by the local registries responsible for each region. Some of these domains may come with other restrictions. For example, auDA (The Australian Domain Administrator) restricts the registration of .com.au domains to businesses with a tax ABN number.

But you or I cannot register domain names at the wholesale price. We need to use accredited companies with the authority to register and administer domains on our behalf. The wholesale domain name price forms only part of the fee charged to you by this company. With additional fees for service, these additional costs can blow this $19.50 +GST into very different prices.

So when considering which company to go with to register your domain names, you will need to consider a number of other factors to determine the best deal.

Do you want telephone customer support or can you work with email contact only?

Some budget domain name companies are able to afford to keep their costs so low by keeping staff levels to a minimum. This means no telephone customer support and all customer contact is done by email. May be fine in most circumstances, but when you need help with more complicated issues, an email conversation can be difficult. Also response times are much slower. You may be waiting hours for the email response you need.

Do you want support 24×7?

If you’re like me, you do a lot of personal web projects over the weekend. But if I hit a snag and have to wait until business hours on Monday to reach customer support, it can put my project back a week. If you think you may need support outside of normal business hours, you may need to pay a little more.

Are you hoping to keep all your website transactions in one place?

Granted, some of the budget domain name companies have cheap prices, but are they capable of dealing with all your other website needs? If you have your web hosting, web design, SEO and other services elsewhere, it may be worth paying that little but extra to have the same company look after your domain names too. Having all your website components in one place can make re-billing and administration a lot easier and that can save money in the long run

Do you want an easy but comprehensive online interface to administer your domains?

It is reasonable to assume that the cheaper the domain name, the less money the business has to put into other customer service features. If you will be using your online control panel to administer your domain names, make sure it is one you are comfortable with and capable of achieving what you need. Remember, if you hit a problem with your online control panel with a cheap provider, as mentioned above, you may not be able to get customer service support when you need it.

Once you know what level of service you want with your domain name, you can then decide how much that is worth to you. By comparing companies with the level of service you need, you will soon identify which one is providing the best deal and which one is relying on ignorance to fuel their high prices.

Of course, Netregistry provides effective and unlimited telephone or email customer support with a proven online interface. Backed up by years of experience, we can honestly say we have one of the best domain name registration deals on the net.