I’ve seen it happen more times than I can count.
A South African business owner signs up for web hosting. The hosting company throws in a “free” domain name as part of the package. Sounds like a great deal, right? Why pay extra when you’re getting it for free?
Then, a few years later, the relationship sours. Maybe the hosting fees go up. Maybe the service is terrible. Maybe the business owner just wants to move to a better provider. And that’s when the trap snaps shut.
The hosting company holds the domain hostage.
They own it. Not you. And they know it. You want to leave? Pay up. You want your domain transferred? Pay up. You want to keep the email address your clients have been using for five years? Pay up.
I’ve watched businesses get held to ransom over a domain name they thought was theirs. The website goes down. The emails stop working. Clients can’t find them. All because someone accepted a “free” domain name without reading the fine print.
Here’s the thing that makes this so infuriating.
Registering your own .co.za domain on Domains.co.za costs R99 to register and R109 to renew and you can reserve that domain for up to 10 years.
R99. That’s less than a takeaway lunch. That’s less than a tank of petrol. That’s nothing, and yet it’s the difference between owning your online identity and renting it from a company that can pull the rug out from under you at any moment.
When you register your domain independently, you control it. You decide where it points. You decide who hosts your website. You can move hosting providers without anyone holding anything over your head. Your domain is yours, full stop.
If you’re a South African business owner reading this, do one thing today. Check who actually owns your domain name. Log into your hosting account and look. If the domain is registered under your hosting company’s account and not yours, you have a problem waiting to happen.
Fix it before it becomes a crisis.
Go to Domains.co.za, register your domain for R99, and point it wherever you want. It takes 20 minutes and it could save your business from a nightmare.
Your domain name is your address on the internet. Don’t let someone else hold the keys.
