Is it possible to be your OWN registrar?

[davidp]

Hi all

I'm from South Africa - and down here we have 1 registrar - http://co.za. Whenever you create a .co.za domain name, you are basically in full control over it. None of this fancy nonsense with enom.com, 000domains, namesforever, register.com etc. I have one .com domain, and whenever I go with a new host, they always talk about taking over the registration of my domain for me.

My question is: is it possible to be your own registrar (as it were) -- like you are with co.za domains? Perhaps what I'm really asking is: is there one main registrar for .com domains -- which will prevent this continual domain registration transfer all the time when moving hosts?

Many thanks,
David

[areidmtm]

Sure! Just fill out a ICANN application and $2,500 application fee, be approved and pay $6,500 to cover six top-level domains.

[felgall]

You don't have to use the domain registrar that goes with the hosting - they are two separate things. As long as the nameservers on the domain point to the hosting it will work regardless of who you register the domain through. Just ignore any requests to switch if you are happy with the domain name registrar you are using.

[davidp]

You don't have to use the domain registrar that goes with the hosting - they are two separate things. As long as the nameservers on the domain point to the hosting it will work regardless of who you register the domain through. Just ignore any requests to switch if you are happy with the domain name registrar you are using.

Thanks for this info, Stephen. Perhaps the better way to ask the question would be: is there any registrar that acts independent of a hosting company (i.e. is there a company that JUST acts as a registrar?)?

Thanks!
David

[aceofspades]

yea fastdomain isnt a hosting company and there are a few independent registrars. The problem with "independent" registrars is that there is so much upfront cost to creating a registrar, at least a credible ICANN one. If it isn't ICANN than it is nothing. Since hosting is usually pretty profitable and the registrar already has servers for its registrar purposes they figure why not just provide rip-off hosting while we are at it. Most registrars "offer" hosting although that isn't their strenghth. They mostly provide reseller packages to hosting companies like bluehost. Most people buy domains from their host cause of the convience and the fact that they just pay a certain amount of cash and they done, no setup necessary. Also most of the time you have to pay a transfer fee. To transfer a domain to your bluehost account it costs 10 bucks anyways.

[felgall]

I am not aware of any hosting company that offers domain registrations or any domain registration company that offers hosting. All of the ones that I have ever seen only offer one or the other.

Of course there are a number of them where a domain registration company and a hosting company are both owned by the same people but even then they are run as separate companies.

Whenever you see a hosting company offering domain registrations they are always obtaining those domains for you through a separate domain registrar company. You don't have to let them arrange the domain name for you and in some instances they don't deal with a company that can provide a domain in the TLD that you want anyway

[davidp]

Thanks very much for taking the time to reply to me and provide information, Stephen and aceofspades. I really appreaciate it.

From the looks of it, I guess it is perfectly fine to get BlueHost to take over the domain registration for me? It looks like things in the .com arena etc are a little ahead of the co.za system of domain registration and management!