Domain names

A domain name is like a street address for a website. Just as you need to know the address of a building to visit it in person, you need to know a website’s domain name to access it online. Domain names are used to make it easier for people to remember and find websites, and they are an important part of a website’s identity.

There are different types of domain names, but most will require your contact details as to register the domain to.  Australian domain names also required to be registered to an ABN.  Most domain names are cheap to register, usually around $20 per year.

Some people buy a domain name in the hope they can auction it at higher price, eg. ‘telephone.com’ has never had a website as the owner wants to sell it for $2m.

You can own multiple domain names, but each domain will cost you a yearly renew fee, so once you own the domain name you should put it work.

You can make a domain name just redirect to another domain name. eg. qldtech.com.au will also bring you here. Its useful for a shortcut, but very rarely used, and shortcut domains don’t normally appear within any search engine.

Some businesses have one domain for their website, and will own a different (usually shorter) domain name to run their email.  Some businesses do this because they have a parent business already using that domain for email.  eg. ‘Telstra.com.au’ have emails coming from ‘Telstra.com’.

These domain types are call Domain Extension. The last word after the last dot, is known as the Top Level Domain (TLD). eg. queenslandtech.com.au is uses domain extension .com.au, the TLD of this is .au.

Anyone can use most of the different domain types, but some extensions have requirements that must be met. eg. only governments can use the .gov, and only educational facilities can use .edu

Different domain extensions are managed by various organisations.  eg. .com is managed by VeriSign, and com.au is managed by auDA.  They are the owners and set the rules, but they don’t sell direct to the public, they are sold through domain brokers like us.  Some of these new domain extensions are considered as premium and so only sell at premium prices.  eg. domain name that ends with .security will cost you $3987 per year!

We sell hundreds of different domain extensions.

You should choose a domain vendor that offers good prices and is flexible to how you use your domain, as many vendors charge for things that doesn’t actually cost them anything, and they can lock your domain and some will stop you transferring it without an additional payments to them.

We offer all year round low pricing on all domains, we don’t charge for transfers, and we don’t charge for setting up simple things like DNS or email forwarding.

All domains are always registered with your contact details, your name, postal address, phone number and an email address. Some types of domains require more information. The registration of most Australian domains also needs to know the business its to be associated with.

Use our domain pricing tool to find out the cost of any domain name.

Just enter what domain name you are thinking of buying and it will tell you if its available, how much it costs and any other associated information. If the domain has already been taken, click the ‘alternatives’ to see the list of alternative names that you might be interested in.

This tool will tell you exactly how many years any particular domain can be registered.

It will also display the cost, its availability, and any other additional information about the domain.

If you are unsure who manages your domain, you can use a ‘whois’ service to find out who is managing your domain for you. If you unhappy with your registrar, you can always transfer your domain to a different registrar, who maybe offering cheaper domain renew prices for your domain.

Because most ‘whois’ tools only work with certain types of domains, we have built our own ‘whois’ service that connects to a very wide range of domains types.

Just enter you domain name in to the ‘whois’ tool, and check the ‘Registrar Name’ as to find who is currently managing that domain.

You can use our free WHOIS service to check public information on almost any domain name, (most other WHOIS services are limited to a few domain types).

Just enter the domain name and our tool will communicate with the official database for that domain type as to the result almost instantly. If that database is currently off-line, our WHOIS will check to see if we already have the information from a previous lookup.

Note that many registers now offer ‘ID protection’ service for domain holders, which will hide most of their registration information from the public;  in these circumstances, the only method of obtaining the information is by contacting the domain holder’s registrar directly.