Who controls your domain name and email?

[Chip Grueter]

We use GoDaddy for our domain names and haven't had any issues with renewals/auto-renewals. If you can show them an email you received stating your domain is about to expire (they send about 10 of them prior to it expiring and another 10 or so during the grace period after expiration) I'm sure they'd refund your money. Otherwise, post it to The Consumerist website, they love stuff like that.

For website hosting, we co-lo, same with our email (Exchange). However I've used Gmail before for domain emailing and it works great. I think it has a few gigabytes per email address too.

If you don't have the resources for co-lo and you want Exchange, Rackpsace is a good alternative:
Hosted Exchange - Exchange Hosting Solutions by Rackspace

For SPAM, we use Postini - works excellent.

 

[Jason Walter]

I use Register.com for both our dealership and personal use. Have had no problems in about 10 years....

 

[Alex Snyder]

Yeah, I did that. They turned it back on, auto renewed a domain I didn't want anymore, and now I own it for another 2 years.

I'm sure I'm not saying anything here you don't know, but wanted to toss this out:

If it is a site you do want to keep, and want it to score well with Google, you should set the length of ownership as long as you can. Google looks at how long a site has been around and how long it is going to be around into the future. Longevity in both directions carries some weight in SEO.

 

[dtg]

For any interested, I just addressed the need for dealers to use self hosting: David T. Gould | DTG | David Gould | Profile | Index | Homepage and posted a link to Startlogic that is offering $3.95 / mo. x 12mo. with $50 google adword credit. (that is free folks) Startlogic offers hosting plus integration to development applications (wordpress, php, mysql, joomla ect...) that allows for independent growth.

Any dealers exploring how hosting can work for them are welcome to stop by: Social 2 to Promotional Index to see how hosting works with facebook dealer pages.

Good Selling,

DTG