Best place to buy multiple domain names

[digger_R]

As the title I'm looking to register/purchase 3-7 domain names for a new business direction I have in mind and am wondering what the best/cheapest/most effective way is?
I'm not looking to use them right away but maybe in a few weeks/months time when some other ideas come to fruition

[matt-ITR]

Various companies have promotions on from time to time. Just look around and go with the cheapest.
If you are buying multiple types, ie. 2x .com, 2x .co.uk etc then it may mean a little more running around.

[Innowaybored]

123-reg is cheap and easy to manage. It is also easy to move them away to a "better" host in the future

[andy-xr]

Innowaybored said:

123-reg is cheap and easy to manage. It is also easy to move them away to a "better" host in the future

They're a prosumer type hosting provider, part of Host Europe who also have Heart Internet in there, who're a bit more business hosting. There are others in the same group who work at different levels.

Buying a domain name is a fairly simple thing, go to any provider and enter the name, give them some money, done.

There's a few knock ons that happen though. Where the domain is hosted can have a bearing on how likely it is to be attacked. For example, Hostgator and GoDaddy type hosting providers will give you cheap as chips domain registration and hosting. But there's only so much support and value you'll get for your $1,50/month.

If you're likely to need hosting later on, someone like TSOHost/Vidahost/Houstroute (all part of Paragon) will work. As would 123-Reg. As would Heart Internet, and UK2 Group. Even 1&1 are reasonably 'good' at what they do.

Your hosting, if/when it comes can be sorted out later, it might be that you're thinking of some world domination and need to take out half of Hetzners datacentre in Germany just to serve up the EU requests, or you could end up on a cloud VPS at Vidahost. There's options either way. But in general, try and avoid the US cheap hosting providers.

[Rutter]

We use www.names.co.uk for a lot of ours.

[-DeaDLocK-]

My advice is always to go for an established player in the domain registration business for your domains, and host elsewhere.

Established domain registrars offer economies-of-scale savings, full-featured control panels that let you do anything you want and are very unlikely to go away in the forseeable future, but their hosting is generally crap.

The reverse is true for hosting.

The last thing you want to do is buy a domain from a small-time host - if the biz goes down (and hosting companies go down a lot), you lose easy access to the domain and it can be a nightmare to transfer it out.