Domain hosting through Serif. Do I own the .com web address

whitegoods_engineer

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Hi, this is a bit of a basic question for those who know about these things but basically, I am going to use Serif's Webplus essentials to do a website. It gives you a .com name which is hosted for a year included in the price of the software.

However, lets say I decide I don't want to use them in the future, can I take the name elsewhere or are they able to keep hold of the name themselves?

Would I be better off registering the domain name myself so that I have control of it in future?

Thanks in advance for any helpful replies.

davb

Haven't used them myself, but I think Serif would be fairly reputable.
There are a lot of people though who prefer to have their domain names and hosting separate (myself included), so that you can recover quickly if something bad happens with either company.

timbim_2

I'd personally steer well clear. Buying the domain yourself is fairly cheap, finding out a few years down the line that you don't own it could be a lot more expensive. If you really want to take advantage of their hosting, get the domain elsewhere and point it to their nameservers. If they're serious about hosting, they'll accept that. If they don't, and they'd be saving money in not paying for the domain, I'd steer well clear.