On the news today I heard about 2 local businesses who ran their business from the web. When they setup their websites they also obtained a domain name through the hosting company. There where problems which resulted in the websites being blocked but this then raised the question “who owns the domain name?”.
They both set up new sites with new domain names, and had to start building up their name on search engines all over again.
Read the agreement you sign up to. It turned out the host owned the domain names. I always recommend that you go through a registrar and register your domain name yourself. You then own it.
P.S. The news report is here.
Tags: Domain name, Hosting, Registrar