Do not allow your website professional or hosting company to control your domain name, as this can lead to websites being "held hostage" in order to force payments and reoccurring contracts.
Do not provide login credentials for your domain name to your website professional or hosting company. Many reputable domain name registrars provide the means to offer administrative access to protect domain owners.
This is arguably the hardest phase of conceptualization for a web design project and may be the first opportunity for the web design team to interact with our clients. Here are some things we try to keep in mind when choosing a domain name:
We have been building websites and purchasing domain names since Network Solutions was the primary provider over twenty years ago and have even had Bob Parsons call us to update us on a transfer on his way to a date during the early days of GoDaddy.
Domain name registrars have changed over the decades - not always for the better. We exclusively recommend NameCheap for the ease of their site, the included privacy and security mechanisms, and their excellent level of support.
