Your website works from day one on your benotely.com link, and plenty of businesses happily stay there. A domain of your own, like yourbusiness.com.au, is a branding choice: it looks sharper on a business card and it's yours for good. Here's how to get one without overpaying or buying things you don't need.
Choosing the name
- Match your business name as closely as you can, all one word:
glowskinstudio.com.au. - Keep it short and sayable. You'll be reading it out over the phone. Avoid hyphens and numbers; people never remember where they go.
- .com.au or .com? If your customers are in Australia, .com.au is the better pick: locals trust it and it signals you're nearby. You'll need an ABN to register one, which you have. If you'd rather not decide, buy the .com.au now; you can always add the .com later and point it at the same site.
Where to buy, and the price that matters
Any well-known registrar works: VentraIP (Australian), Namecheap or GoDaddy are common choices. Expect roughly $10 to $25 AUD a year. Two things to watch at checkout:
- The renewal price, not the first-year price. A "$2 first year!" deal that renews at $40 is a worse buy than a flat $15. The renewal price is the real price.
- Skip the upsells. You don't need hosting (BeNotely serves your website), you don't need a website builder (you have one), and you don't need an SSL certificate (your site is already secured). The one upsell worth considering is a professional email address like
hello@yourbusiness.com.au, and even that can wait; it's separate from your website and you can add it any time.
Two settings worth turning on if the registrar offers them: auto-renew (an expired domain takes your website offline and puts the name back on the open market) and domain privacy where it's free (it keeps your personal details out of the public record).
Then connect it
Once it's yours, connecting takes two DNS records and a couple of minutes. The exact steps are in Connect your own domain. Connecting a domain is part of the paid plans; your benotely.com link keeps working regardless, and both addresses reach the same site once connected.