Purchasing a domain is one of the first tasks that must be completed to create a website. At The Urban Geeks, our preferred domain registrar is actually one of the newest. Google Domains hasn’t been around as long as your GoDaddy’s or Host Gator’s; however, Google Domains’ super easy user interface and low costs make it the ideal domain registrar.

Costs + Privacy Registration

One of the biggest reasons we love Google Domains is easily the cost. At $12/year for .com registrations, Google Domains is one of the lowest priced domain registrars out there. You may see coupons and deals for the first year registration at other companies; however, the costs usually go up significantly in subsequent years. They may also spam you on purchasing additional services. With Google Domains, the cost is set and they don’t spam you for any other services.

*Other TLD (top level domains) like .org or .co may have different costs

Privacy Registration

Another cost associated with domain registration is privacy registration. Most people don’t know that domain registration information is public information that anyone can search on the internet. This aspect usually leads to loads of email and physical mail spam. To alleviate this issue, companies offer privacy registration which protects your personal information from spammy hands. Most companies charge a premium for their privacy registration system. Google doesn’t! Privacy registration is included in the price of the domain. Google wins on both fronts when it come to domain costs.

Sharing Access

One thing we always tell our clients is that they must and should own their own domain. It can be tempting to just let your web designer or developer purchase the domain and bill you; however, if things go south with the relationship, the web designer now holds all of the power when it comes to turning the website back over to the business owner. We’ve unfortunately ran into new clients that did not own their domain which has made it difficult to get started on their new website. Needless to say, making calls to the former website designer to complete a domain transfer are never fun.

With Google, they once again make it super easy to share access to a domain. For The Urban Geeks, we first tell our clients to purchase the domain via Google Domains. Once the domain is purchased, the client then uses these instructions to share access to the domain. Now, we can begin our work and make the necessary changes.

To be honest, we absolutely love Google Domains. Dealing with a large company like Google gives us peace of mind when it comes to ensuring domains services are reliable. They take the pain out of purchasing a domain which means the hardest part is finding a great domain name! We hope this post helps you when it’s time to purchase your next domain. Definitely contact us if you have any questions!

Google Domains | Services We Use Series