Buying a domain is one of the few genuinely simple transactions in this whole business. The complications are all in the fine print, so here's the order of operations with the traps marked.

1. Choose the name

Aim for: easy to say out loud, easy to spell after hearing it once, and not a riddle. davesplowing.com beats dave-s-plowing-and-ice-llc.com.

Avoid hyphens unless the unhyphenated version is taken and you're desperate. Avoid numbers — people don't know whether "4" is a digit or the word. Avoid names that need spelling out loud on the phone.

If your business name is taken as a .com, don't panic and don't buy davesplowing.info in a hurry. Add your town — davesplowingbuffalo.com — or use a .net. See .com vs .net vs the rest.

2. Search for it

Any registrar's search box. Results are marked available or taken. Two kinds of "taken" you'll see:

• Registered by someone — genuinely unavailable.
• "Premium" — available, but priced at $500–$5,000 because a speculator owns it and is reselling. Ignore these. There is always another name.

3. Pick a registrar and don't overthink it

A registrar is the company that registers the name with the central registry. Any of the big ones work: Namecheap, Cloudflare Registrar, Porkbun, GoDaddy, Google Domains' successor via Squarespace. Hosts and builders will also sell you one — convenient, slightly more expensive, and fine.

What matters is price at renewal, an account in your name, and not being locked into a hosting bundle you didn't want.

4. Read the renewal price, not the signup price

This is trap number one. A domain advertised at $0.99 or $1.99 for the first year frequently renews at $20–$35. Over five years, the cheap-looking deal can be the expensive one.

On the checkout page, look for a line about renewal. If it isn't shown, search the registrar's price list. Cloudflare Registrar sells at wholesale cost with no first-year discount and no markup on renewal, which is boring and often cheapest long-term.

5. Say no to the add-ons

Checkout will offer you:

• Domain privacy / WHOIS protection — sometimes free, sometimes $10–$15 a year. Most registrars now redact personal details by default because of privacy law. Check before paying.
• SSL certificate — decline. Certificates are free now; your host provides one.
• Website builder — decline unless you want that specific one.
• Business email — decline here; you can add email later, usually cheaper directly.
• "Ultimate" anything — decline.

You are buying one thing: the name, for a year.

6. Register it in your own name

Your email address. Your card. Your login. Write the login down somewhere you'll find it again.

If someone helps you, have them sit next to you rather than do it for you. A domain registered on a contractor's account is not your domain, no matter what the invoice says.

7. Turn on auto-renew and two-step login

Auto-renew costs nothing and prevents the single worst outcome in this guide: your domain quietly expiring because a card expired, and your website and business email going dark. If you'd rather not auto-renew, put a reminder in your calendar 30 days before the expiry date.

Two-step login (a code by text or app) means a stolen password doesn't hand over your address.

8. Point it at your website

Your host or builder gives you two nameservers, looking like ns1.something.com and ns2.something.com. In your registrar's control panel, find "nameservers" or "DNS" and paste them in. Save.

Then wait. It usually takes a few minutes to a few hours to work everywhere — up to 48 hours in the worst case, though that's rare now. During that window the site may load for some people and not others. That's normal and not a sign you did it wrong.

If your host asks for individual DNS records instead (an A record and a CNAME), follow their instructions exactly. Both approaches are normal.

Later: moving the domain

You can transfer a domain to a different registrar after 60 days, using an authorization code from your current one. It usually costs one year's renewal and adds a year to your term. See do I own my domain name for what "owning" really means here.