Domain Names

Kathie, the domain name costs $35 a year, but you pay the first 2 years in advance, so $70. The hosting charges depends on what ISP you go with. In my case, I was already an Earthlink member, so they kept the domain hosting charges the same, $19.95 a month, but for non-Earthlink members, the cost is $29.95 a month. Earthlink also has tons of stuff online to educate you about different features you can include on your web site, from basic graphic information to more advanced things like CGI. All of that is free. And I'm sure most ISPs offer similar services.

No matter who the host is, there will undoubtedly be a one-time setup fee, maybe $100 or so. In Earthlink's case, they are in competition with AOL, so they regularly have deals for AOL refugees. So total startup charges will probably run you in the vicinity of $200. But maintaining/updating would be hard to put a value on if you do it yourself. I design and maintain my own, but I have no idea what the going rate is for that.

Kelly Cheek

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Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 10:50:55 -0400
From: art@visionqueststudio.com
Subject: illustration: Domain Costs
While the actual domain costs $70, be careful that who you get it through doesn't add on their own fee for this. Yes, you can go directly to Internic and get the domain, but then some web hosts will charge you for "moving" an already registered domain name to their service. The best deal is usually with a web hosting service where they will help you get the domain without any add on fees.

I have used Webcom for hosting both my site and for clients' sites and been very pleased. They are big enough and growing still so that they are stable (and won't fold up tomorrow and take your site with them!) and they keep on adding services, capacities, while reducing prices. (Amazing!) They have a pretty good setup for establishing an online store at your site and accepting credit cards, etc. They've worked out a deal so the usual fees with those merchant processing companies are waived or reduced for their customers.

They offer a 30 day free trial for web hosting. Oh, and their new service is you can get your domain and "park" it there for free, with no website. Indefinitely and no added fees. (So you can reserve that special name and not kill yourself getting a website up immediately).

http://www.webcom.com

Good luck!

Denise R.

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Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 13:21:41 -0500
From: Ellen Leonard
Subject: illustration: Domain name fees

I read the recent messages about getting domain names for web sites with interest. I, too, am interested in getting a domain name and ditching my current URL (http://home.sprintmail.com/~lnleonard) for a shorter, easier to remember domain name.

I checked out domain.com which was listed in one of the messages, as having good prices. They have a hosting service called "forwarding" which in their words is: "Forwarding simply forwards all requests for a domain to some other URL or web address. You could use this if your dial-up provider (for example AOL) has given you some directory space and you want requests for you domain to be redirected to your own pages." This service cost $15/year.

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