StatCounter Insights

Free Insights & Training in SEO, Web & Social Media

Free Domain Registration

When it comes to selecting a type of web hosting for your business’s website, it’s important to ensure the host you choose suits the needs of your business. For instance, both shared and VPS hosting are common choices, however, some business websites may require more space and even their own server, which is only an option within dedicated hosting. In fact, a dedicated server is necessary for many businesses whose websites receive (or will receive) a great deal of traffic each month. So, if you know your website or type of business draws in significant traffic, you’ll want to consider a dedicated server for the business’s website.

Given that your domain name will be displayed in the URL for every page of your website, and represents your website and business, registering your domain is an important part of the web-building process. Considering this, take a moment to learn the ins and outs of free domain registration and the issues it can present.

Suggested Reading

Whether you already have a domain name or are ready to move on to further reading, you can gain more insight into web hosting by viewing the pages provided below:

Pros and Cons of Free Domain Registration

As mentioned, there’s a few fairly significant disadvantages that come with free domain name registration, as well as free web hosting. Having said that, there’s still potential benefits for those seeking to build smaller websites or blogs.

Pros

Of course, the main advantage of free domain registration is the cost—or lack thereof. For the most part, these free domains are good for one year, which also means you may have to pay after the initial year. Or, if the blog serves a temporary purpose, you’ll only need the domain name for that one year.

Free domains are also great to start with if you’re new to websites. It’s an even greater benefit if the site you’re using offers seamless paid upgrades. This way, you can start with a free domain (and hosting) until your site is ready to expand. When you want to scale up, you can simply upgrade your plan and grow your website.

While we’re at it, let’s talk free web hosting, as this most often accompanies free domain registration. Much like free domains, free web hosting is best suited for those either new to websites or are simply looking to create a temporary space or blog. If you’re planning on building a professional website and maintaining it, you’ll be quite limited in services and features. If you weren’t, no one would bother upgrading to paid plans. This brings us to the disadvantages of free domain registration.

Cons

As we alluded to above, free domains are pretty bare bone. In other words, they don’t offer nearly as many features as paid domains and hosting plans do, but we’ll cover that below. A big thing to note here is free domain names won’t fully meet your preferences. You often won’t get a simple “.com” in your URL, or the site will leave a portion of their domain in your URL.

Real World Application

If you create a website for, let’s say, a landscaping business under the name of Larson Landscaping and register your domain for free on WordPress, your URL will look something like this: “www.larsonlandscaping.wordpress.com”. Needless to say, domain names like these are unappealing to web users, and they’ll be inclined to view another site instead.

Getting back to limitations, free domain registration and free web hosting alike won’t offer much in terms of services and features—not without paying for them, at least. You may be restricted to a specific number of pages for your site, plus, the company’s branding will most likely be placed on your site as well. Furthermore, you’ll be allotted less storage space and bandwidth and may not have access to 24/7 customer support.

Finally, websites hosted for free or with free domains don’t perform well in search engines, or SEO. These search engines, like Google, prefer websites with domains registered for over 2 years—an option not typically available with free domains. Plus, the aforementioned unappealing domain name will cause users to bounce from your site, which sends a signal to search engines and will ultimately hurt your rankings in search results.

Getting the Most out of Free Domain Registration

Though there are some significant disadvantages to free domains, that’s not to say everyone should steer away from them. Just as we explained above, free domain registration is a viable option for temporary sites and blogs, but they can be even more advantageous for those in the early development stages of a website.

To save on costs, you can seek a web hosting site that offers free domain registration, begin to build the foundation of your site, and upgrade when needed. Of course, you’ll need to ensure the provider you choose has the option to not only upgrade, but upgrade seamlessly as to not lose any progress you’ve made on your website.

Summary

Despite the many disadvantages associated with free domain registration, it does offer some potential benefits to certain users. Nevertheless, if you’re planning on building and maintaining a more professional website, you’ll need to purchase a domain. In short, free domains are great for beginners, and if the site offers easy upgrades, they can be quite useful. No matter the case, you pay for what you get.

Register Your Domain and Monitor Your Website!

When you do upgrade to a full-feature plan and begin building out your website, it’s important to monitor the results of any changes you make in terms of traffic and how users navigate through your site. In doing so, you can gain insight as to which areas of your site stand room for improvement, and make necessary changes to acquire new visitors can keep them on site. With StatCounter and our web tracker, you can track a range of metrics to do just that.

As the trusted domain and web hosting provider of StatCounter, 1&1 offers a wide range of web hosting services and solutions. With quality services and affordable pricing, 1&1 has become one of the most reputable hosting providers around. If you still aren’t sold on 1&1, most of their hosting plans come with a free domain and many additional features to help improve your site. Learn more below:

If you have any questions or need some assistance, you can contact support by filling out the form provided below.

Share this article

Understand your visitors with Statcounter

See why over 1,500,000 bloggers, web designers, marketing and SEO professionals and small business owners around the world use Statcounter to grow their business.

Learn More