Buying Your Web Address

What this is

A web address (also called a "domain") is what people type to find you online — like smithbakery.com or petesplumbing.net. Without one, your website only has a long random URL nobody can remember. With one, you have a real business address on the internet that fits on a business card.

You can either buy a new one through us (this guide) or bring one you already own from somewhere else (see Pointing an Existing Domain Here).

What it costs

Real prices, no tricks. These are the exact yearly prices we charge — same as what AWS charges us, no markup:

Ending	Price per year
.com	$15
.net	$17
.org	$15
.co	$38
.io	$71
.ai	$129
.app	$20
.dev	$17
.biz	$23
.info	$28
.me	$31
.shop	$43
.store	$40
.site	$25
.online	$25
.tech	$40
.digital	$42
.studio	$13
.agency	$30
.services	$13
.solutions	$13

Prices verified 2026-05-12. AWS occasionally adjusts TLD prices; we update this page when they change so it always matches what you'd actually pay. The price you see on the Register button in your dashboard is fetched live from AWS at the moment of purchase, so it's always current.

You pay once a year. We'll email you 30 days before each renewal so you can decide whether to keep it. No "first year cheap, then surprise" pricing — the price you sign up at is the price you renew at (unless AWS changes their fee, in which case the change is passed through directly, up or down).

How to buy one (about 1 minute)

1. Open your dashboard and click DNS in the left menu
2. In the search box, type the name you want (e.g. smithbakery.com) and hit Search
3. We'll show you whether it's available + the exact yearly price
4. If your first choice is taken, we'll suggest similar names you could grab instead (different endings, slightly different spellings)
5. When you see one you like, click Register
6. Fill in your name, address, and phone number (this is required by the international group that runs domain names — we don't see this info unless you tell us to look)
7. Click Confirm. We charge your card the price shown on screen
8. You're done. Your domain becomes active within about 5 minutes. You'll get a confirmation email when it's live.

"Wait, do I actually own it?"

Yes. Your name is on the official record. You're the legal owner.

The technical mechanism — and this is the same model Squarespace, Shopify, and Wix use when they "sell" you a domain — is that the registration lives in our AWS account (we're the technical reseller), but the ownership is yours per the global domain registry.

Three concrete things this gives you:

• 👋 You can leave any time. One click in Settings → DNS → Transfer to another registrar and we hand you the secret code you need to move the domain to GoDaddy, Cloudflare, Namecheap, or anywhere else. We don't block it, slow-walk it, or charge a fee. AWS automatically completes the transfer in about 5 days.
• 🔒 Your personal info is hidden by default. Domain ownership records used to be public — anyone could look up your home address. We turn on "privacy protection" for free, automatically, so the public record shows our company name, not yours. Your contact info stays private.
• 🔁 Auto-renewal is on. We'll charge your card 30 days before the domain expires each year. If you'd rather pay manually, you can turn this off in Settings with one toggle.

Tips for picking a good name

• Keep it short. Shorter names are easier to remember, type, and say out loud.
• No hyphens or numbers. "smith-bakery-7.com" sounds like a scam. "smithbakery.com" sounds like a business.
• .com if you can get it. It's what people instinctively type. Other endings work fine for specific industries (.shop for retail, .ai for tech, .org for non-profits) but expect customers to occasionally type ".com" by mistake.
• Match your business name. If your business is "Smith's Bakery", smithsbakery.com is a better choice than bestbakerynearme.com — consistency builds trust.
• Trademark check. If your business name is trademarked, search the USPTO trademark database before buying. Don't buy a domain that's another company's trademark — they can take it from you.

What's NOT in the registration

The yearly fee covers the name only. It does NOT include:

• A website (that's what we build — you're already covered if you signed up with us)
• An email address ending in your domain (see Getting Your Email Working — it's free and takes 10 minutes)
• A business email service like Google Workspace. Those cost separately. The free email forwarding we set up usually does the trick.

Country-specific endings

We don't currently support country-specific endings like .de (Germany), .ca (Canada), or .uk (United Kingdom). These have extra paperwork that makes them slower to register — we may add them later. If you need one of these, buy it at Namecheap, then bring it to us via the Pointing an Existing Domain Here guide.

Next steps

Once your domain is registered, two short follow-ups complete the setup:

1. Getting Your Email Working — make hello@yourdomain.com show up in your regular Gmail. Free.
2. Managing Your Domain — turn auto-renew on/off, check when it expires, and other day-to-day things.