Your domain name is a vital asset of your firm, however, do you, in fact, own your domain? If you tried to move your website hosting could you take your domain name with you? What if right now you had to give up your domain because it was owned by the hosting company instead of you?

Don’t let this happen to you. Many web hosts will offer to reserve the domain name for your accounting firm, then turn around and reserve the domain in their own name in an account that your firm can’t access.

Don’t think that dealing with a large company is any protection! There are some large companies that actually charge accountants a $50 fee when they leave if they want to take the domain name with them!

When allowing a host to purchase your accounting firm’s domain name, ask some screening questions:

• Will the domain be registered in my name?
• Will I be listed as the “Administrative Contact”?
• Will the domain be reserved in a retail account in my name with a control panel that I can access?
• Can I lock you out of that control panel if I choose to?
• Can I continue to manage my domain through this control panel even if my accounting firm decide to stop hosting through you?

Domain Pricing from Domains for CPA's

If the answer to ANY of these questions is “No” politely inform the representative you are speaking with that you will reserve the domain for your accounting firm yourself.

It is easy to register your accounting firm’s own domain and it will guarantee that you can keep control of your accounting firm’s website address even if you change website providers. Registering a URL is easy and inexpensive (on average $15 a year).

CPA Site Solutions provides a service that meets all these criteria and caters specifically to accountants and CPAs. A client domain registration through CPA Site Solutions is done by setting up a retail account in your name with a third party domain name registrar. This gives you, the customer, actual ownership and administrative control over your domain.

This means that if an accounting firm ever leaves our hosting service they will be able to take their domain name with them.

Your domain name is your accounting firm’s real estate on the web. Make sure your accounting firm actually owns it and not your web host or some other third party.

Important TIPS for domain name owners:

• When you change your email address always make sure you log into your domain name registrars site first and make sure they have the new email. It may save you a HUGE headache when the time comes to renew.
• Don’t treat your registrars email as spam. You may miss important renewal/billing info. This could result in interruptions to your Email and website service.
• Remember, auto-renew will only work if your registrar has a valid, up-to-date credit card number on file.

Have a question or an interesting story regarding domain ownership? Send a comment. Your post is read and responded to each and every time.

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