One further cost can arise if you choose to register a Domain Name for yourself.
This is a prestige web address, (rather like a city centre postal address), and usually gives you the Web address of "www.yourname.com" or "www.yourname.co.uk".
There are two main reasons why you might want one. Firstly, it presents a credible image for your business or organisation. Secondly, when printed on your letterheads, adverts, leaflets etc (now known collectively as 'treeware') it provides your existing and potential customers with a short, easy to remember name to type into their browser, rather than a long one that includes the name of your ISP or web hosting company. (Long names need more remembering and user typing, giving more chance of mistakes and lost visitors).
Typically domains may cost between about £15 and £200 per year depending on whether you just want to register a domain name, or whether you want an ISP to register and accommodate your Domain Name within a web access and hosting package for you.
The lowest cost domains are those ending in .co.uk, but specialised ones like .gov.uk (for government organisations) can be ten times the cost, and for foreign ones like .it (Italy) of .fr (France), the controlling country sets its own charges.
For just the Domain name, those ending in the '.co.uk' format are less costly than those ending in '.com' - but if your business is multinational, then you might want to think about registering a domain in each of the countries in which you trade.
Because Domain Names are allocated on a world-wide first come, first served basis, you need to decide quite early whether you will want your own. Most of the more common or popular names have already been allocated.
Many companies, concerned about "cybersquatting" (where someone registers a domain name that your company might want to use in the future in the hope of selling it on to you for a profit) are registering all the possible suffixes of their name (.co.uk, .com, .org, .net and so on) together with similar sounding names and "popular" mis-spellings. These are then simply "parked" and unused, or they have low cost web and email forwarding packages attached to them, so all visitors and email directed to them, are "forwarded" to the "main" website and email address.
Our Local Domains offer an option to acquire a unique web address at very low cost, and there is no additional charge for using a Local Domain if you commission us to design and build your website.
