DOMAIN NAMES

A domain name, also known as a web address or URL, is how people find your website. It’s a unique identifying address used to find and connect to a website through a web browser.

For example, our domain name, www.fasthosts.co.uk, lets you quickly and easily access the Fasthosts website. This works because each domain name is mapped to an individual IP address, which is a unique numerical label assigned to each website, server or device connected to the internet. It would be impossible for people to remember the IP addresses of all the sites they wanted to visit, so domain names solve this problem and help to reinforce online brand identity at the same time.

A domain name registrar is a company that manages the reservation of domain names and the assignment of IP addresses to these domains. However, a common misconception is that registrars sell domain names. In fact, domains are owned by domain name registries and can only be leased by customers (which is why domains must be renewed).

Domain registries are organisations that store information about domain names and their associated registrant information. Domain name registries are managed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Domain registries delegate the ‘sale’ of domain names to registrars like Fasthosts. Domain name registrars have to notify the associated domain registry when a domain name is registered by a customer.

ICANN is a non-profit organisation that handles the maintenance and procedures of core internet functions, including IP address allocation, domain name system (DNS) management, protocol parameter assignment, root server system management, domain registration provider accreditation, and more.

You should register domains suited to your website and location. For example, .co.uk is a great choice for a company aimed at the UK market, but .com is better for targeting a global audience.

A wide range of domains also exist for various types of website, such as .org for organisations and many more.

You can register a UK domain or .com domain for just £1 £1 for one year. Or if you want a domain name that's a little different, like .online, .shop or .org, offer prices start from only £1 .

Domain names are registered on an annual basis. If the domain owner decides not to renew the registration, it will expire.

Conversely, if the domain owner doesn’t want to lose the domain, they can continue renewing their registration and keep it for as long as they want.

It’s easy! We'll renew your domain automatically, so there's no need to do anything. But, if you’d rather do things the manual way, that’s no problem either. We’ll send you a reminder of when your domain name will expire, so you can manually renew your domain or let it expire.

Domain names are made up of the domain extension or 'top-level domain' (.com, .co.uk, etc.) and the second-level domain part (the 'example' in 'example.com').

When someone tries to access your website by typing in 'example.com' the DNS server will locate its IP address by first going to the group of .com domains, and then searching for the .com domain labelled 'example' to find your website.

Want to learn more about the DNS lookup process? Read our in-depth blog post on what DNS is and how it works.

Domain names can be made of up to 63 characters, and these characters can include the letters A-Z, numbers 0-9, and hyphens. However, hyphens cannot be the first or last character of your domain name.

Domain names cannot include underscores, exclamation marks or any other characters. Domain names are not case sensitive.

Transferring your domain names to Fasthosts is easy and completely free. Visit our domain transfers page for more information.

Because we give you full access to your DNS (domain name system) records, we make it as easy as possible for you to transfer your domain names to other people. This means you can easily sell your domain if you want to.

There are a few options to get email on your domain name. Unlimited email address forwarding is completely free with all domains registered with Fasthosts. Create unlimited personal email addresses using your own domain name, e.g. you@yourdomain.co.uk, and use our free email forwarding service to redirect mail to your existing address, e.g. your Gmail or Hotmail account. Unlike many providers, we don't add our own signature text or advert links to your emails, even though our email address forwarding service is free

Free email forwarding allows you to create professional email addresses to receive mail from, but in order to send email from your email address, you'll need a full mailbox facility. With business-class Email Hosting from Fasthosts for as little as £1 per month you can instantly open a personalised professional mailbox.