Of course for businesses you have no choice, you got to get one for the n number of reasons that you might get on a Google search. Long time back my good old friend Shankar Subrahmanian asked me What do you do with a domain name ?
So here are the pros and cons of having a domain name in your name.
Advantages
- You feel as if you are one the web, on the net, having a web presence or identity or what ever.
- Have a stylish email id root@root.com or me@me.com or whatever@whatever.whatever . Yes most domain names will let you have unlimited email ids and you can have a catch all email id so that you can get all spam.
- You can find the web site who spammed you. On the registration form on various websites, give the email id as websitename@yourdomainname and use the catchall option to get the registration info. Later you can know when you get an unknown newsletter, or spam from which web site it actually originated or which web site sold your email address.
- You don’t loose your identity till you stop renewing your domain.
- You can register and get free samples of products from sites like http://microchip.com where they do not accept emails from hotmail,yahoo or gmail or any free email providers.
- Create as many accounts that you want for invite by email id sites. You can have multiple Gizmo accounts or anything that offers a service or product for free.
- Provide great content and your site becomes a brand, a sellable commodity something like a business entity.
Disadvantages
- Spam
- Spam
- and more spam with catch all
- Its like you lost your anonymity, anybody can contact you. You have a forced identity. Well you asked for it …
- You got to pay renewal fee every year 🙁
- You got to have hosting and have to pay for it 🙁
I want to add more, but here’s a start. do comment and add more advantages or disadvantages.
You certainly need to pay for the domain, but you can save the hosting bill. You can host your email with Google (http://www.google.com/a/) or Microsoft (office.microsoft.com/en-us/officelive).
I knew about google apps for domain, but had no clue of MS Office Live. But looks like the hosting support in the free version is very limited., especially if you want to have a php site or even ftp to publish
Google Apps is enough, if all you want is to host your email with them. But if you need a website too, then it always better to go for a hosting service and let Google manage the email for you.
The mail limitation of Office Live is that it is now available in only a select few countries and that you need a Credit Card to signup.
True friends are those who really know you but love you anyway.