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We have asked many questions and tried to answer most of the important ones.
If you want a free domain, check out our plans! We offer a lifetime free domain with nearly every plan except the first shared hosting plan. For more information, feel free to reach out to us.
A domain name is what makes your site visible to the outside world. For example, our domain name is Hoyist.com, the address you used to get here. A domain name is where your online presence begins. These days, it’s possibly more important than having a phone number. With our instant domains search, you can check domain name availability and find a specific name for your site.
A domain is an actual name or address people will use to navigate to your website. Web hosting is what powers the storage and back end of your site to make it functional. You can order a domain without web hosting, but you can’t purchase hosting without a domain name.
Absolutely! If you have already registered your domain with another provider, such as GoDaddy, you can use the form above to transfer it to Hoyist.
In the earlier days of the Internet, you were limited to three top-level domains (TLDs), also referred to as domain extensions or domain endings. These were:
1 - .com (Commercial)
2 - .net (Network)
3 - .org (Organization)
However, times have changed and there are now hundreds of different TLDs, the most popular extensions being .biz, .us, .dev, .xyz, and so on. This gives you many options to choose from. While .com is the most popular domain extension, you are welcome to search for the extensions that work best for you.
To register your domain name, you first need to check if it is available. You can use our search function to check the domain names that you’re interested in. If you find an available domain that you like, you can register it to own it. Registering a domain name means you will need to pay a yearly renewal fee, for example $16.99 per year for a .com extension. If you don’t pay this renewal fee, the domain name becomes available for registration again.
Occasionally, registered investors or other organizations register domains and make them available on the aftermarket. Aftermarket domains appear on an online marketplace for domain names where you would need to register a bid or make an offer to the owner to obtain the domain. A domain name that shows as ‘premium’ in our instant search is still available, but most of the time at a much higher rate than an original registration would cost you.
Yes! You can register as many domains as you’d like for your website.
If you have an existing email account, like a personal Gmail account, you can register a domain and purchase email forwarding. This allows you to forward emails from your domain name to your Gmail account. If you’d prefer a separate email account for your domain, these are available with our web hosting packages.
Unfortunately, all domain registrations are final upon payment and cannot be changed. So it's imperative that you double-check the spelling of a domain name when you register it. However, you do not have any obligation to continue renewing the domain each year if you’ve purchased one and you don’t want it anymore. You can let it expire once the first year is complete.
