Domain Name Changed Again And ...

Do not forget to checkout my latest post on domain registrars - New Domain Registrar.

Hopefully the last time. Yes, rahul.ind.in is soon going to be obsoleted. The new domain name is rahul.amaram.name. And now I also have my own personal email id which is of the from firstnameATlastname.name. The reason for the shift of the domain name is:

1. I got tired of switching to a new email id whenever I changed my email service provider. Initially, I had a hotmail id, then started using a yahoo id and currently using gmail id. Tomorrow I may use another email service provider. Hence I decided to have one email id for mail and have mails forwarded from this id to the current email service provider.

2. My current domain name "rahul.ind.in" had a .in extension. I didn't want my domain name to be country specific. Moreover .name extension is for personal domain names (http://www.name). Hence I decided to change my domain name.

My old domain name "rahul.ind.in" was due for expiry this month and I decided to search for alternate domain name providers as I did not feel my current domain name provider (sify) was very feature rich. One very important thing to keep in mind while choosing a registrar is to make sure that it is reputed or else they may pose a problem later when trying to transfer the domain to another registrar.

Features to look out for while choosing a registrar

- Total DNS control (Managed DNS for modifying A,MX,CNAME records including those of sub-domains)
- Email forwarding (useful if you want to forward all emails coming to your domain (ex. john@smith.name) to some external email service provider (ex. john.smith@gmail.com))
- Url Forwarding/Masking
- Preferably instant DNS record changes
- Private/Hidden whois (if privacy is a concern for you. A hidden whois will hide your details from the world)
- Support for various domain extensions in case you have multiple domains (for ex. I am the owner of three domains - rahul.ind.in, amaram.name and diya.in. I would definitely want to have a single provider which would allow me to register all these three domains with it so that management becomes easy for me)

Recommended Indian Accredited Registrars (especially if you plan to purchase multiple domain extensions)

http://www.mitsu.in
http://www.answerable.com (not Indian but ICANN accredited registrar)
http://www.name.com (this provides great features for a very reasonable price but customer support may not be that great)

Other accredited Indian registrars offering the some/all of the above features

http://www.enames.in
http://www.net4domains.com
http://www.signdomains.com
http://www.netandhost.com
http://www.indomains.net
http://www.indialinks.com
http://www.netlynx.org
http://in.incyberinc.com
http://ikon.myorderbox.com
https://registry.sify.com
http://www.onlinenic.com (Real bad reviews on the internet)