It’s a bad idea to register your own domain names. It’s easy to forget the domains you register, because it’s another year before they come up for renewal for a .com, and 2 years for a com.au. A pivotal piece of your registration is your email address. Your domain registrar will use it exclusively for corresponding with you when it comes time to renew your domain.

This is a problem for new businesses who might not yet have a business email address, and are using businessname@ozemail.com.au or some similar email address at their ISP.

It is amazingly common for domain names to expire because the owner changed their ISP, and so their email address changed too. This similarly occurs with free online email addresses like at Hotmail, or Yahoo.

By having a company manage your domain names, you can have peace of mind your registration will always be renewed on time and your website will never embarrassingly go down due to the expiration of your domain name.

If you have purchased the domain for a future project or as an investment the consequences of not collecting your renewal email can mean losing your domain forever. Most recently expired domain names are purchased by domain-squatters, so the chances of recovering it after expiry are minimal or expensive.

Check with your web host as most offer a service to manage your domains.