Zuni blog

Although there is only three of us at the moment, one of the first things we had to consider was our IT set-up. Things we needed were:

• Internet connection & phones
• Domain & Email hosting
• Shared document storage space and calendars
• Project management, collaboration and time tracking
• Web hosting

Without an IT manager or “techie” in the team, Val took on the Internet, phones and printers and I started looking at the domain and email hosting side of things.

Originally I was looking for combined domain and email hosting, but quickly discovered through talking to people that for email hosting a solution like Google apps would be much more suitable for our needs (more on that next time). So I focused on purchasing the domain names we wanted.

I’ve bought a domain name once before and I know that it doesn’t really matter where you buy it from as you should be able to easily re-point it anywhere you want. So the only requirement I was really after was the ability to have a fully accessible control panel for administering the domain. Things to look for in terms of being able to administer your domain is the ability to update and add A, CNAME and MX records, sometimes described as ‘zone files’. I also checked that there was technical support, just in case anything were to go wrong, but mostly it was a price based decision. Note that some providers charge you extra for the domain administration interface on top of the domain registration cost.

I started with MelbourneIT as they’re probably the most well known. They are currently charging $70 for a 2yr registration. I knew that I could get a cheaper domain name, so I went to Google and searched on “domain name registration”. There are over 48 million results. Crazy Domains currently have an ad for $1 domains. I started to have doubts over the legitimacy of some of these sites that were selling domains, so I did a bit more digging and discovered ICANN’s (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) accredited list of registrars:

http://www.icann.org/en/registrars/accredited-list.html

Unfortunately, they don’t seem to accredit .com.au domains, so instead I just went through all the ones listed with Australia as the country. I also looked up some of the providers on http://www.whirlpool.net.au to make sure there were no horror stories.

To save you time, here’s my top five list of domain registrants that met my requirements. Prices listed are for 2yrs registration, note that the price point for .co.nz domains is normally advertised for 1yr only.

I chose Planet Domain for our domain names, as although the site uses false special rates to expedite your purchase, they were the cheapest in my short list, and it was very clear on the site that the domain administration tools were included in the price. I also got a 3 month subscription to .NETT magazine.

BTW, when you register a domain you’ll get a heap of paperwork and a number of different passwords for things, be sure to keep these safe in case you ever need to make changes to your details.