Name.com

Overview

One of the most useful internet domain registrar and web hosting companies today, Name.com was founded in 2003 by Bill Mushkin. The privately held company has about 31 employees and over one million domain names registered. Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, Name.com works on a variety of products and services, including web hosting, email, website builder, premium and expired domain names, and SSL certificates.

Name.com lends itself to several philanthropic events and supports many non-profit organizations. It has also supported a small literary organization located in South Africa as well as the Colorado based Environment Colorado.

In 2002, Mushkin bought the company from Spot Domain LLC. Due to a strong business sense and savvy marketing, Name.com has continued to thrive in the web hosting market. It offers great products, competitive pricing and a strong customer service base. Employees of Name.com are also committed to providing quality products and services to their customers and partners.

Usability

Perhaps the most important tool in a domain registrar is the domain search and Name.com makes sure this is the first thing you see when you enter the site. Entering a name in the search bar will yield a .com extension domain name as default top search, while below this are suggested results, available new domains, and a few more results. Available and suggested domains come with corresponding price which is useful to those who want to consider registering other extensions but aren’t familiar with what else is available. On the other hand, doing bulk domain search can be done by clicking ‘Searching Multiple Domains’ in the same search bar.

Its main services, domains, websites, hosting, SSL, and email, are directly above the search tab so that users wanting to explore additional services other than just registration can easily go to each tab, which comes with a more detailed submenu. The Account page lets you track your domains’ transfer progress, renewal, sync expiration dates, and forwarding tools, etc. It also provides a platform for managing products (eg., hosting, email, website builder, etc.), and user information including settings for adjusting account details, privacy, nameservers, and account security settings. All of these can be done breezily with an ever user-friendly back-end.

Domain Privacy

A customer’s personal and business registration info, including complete name, physical address, email and phone number can be protected via Name.com’s Whois Privacy plan at $3.99 a year – one of the lowest privacy protection rates available. After searching for a domain name, a user who goes directly to checkout doesn’t have to search for this product as it automatically appears on the page, with an option to remove it by clicking on the ‘x’ mark. At its current rate, Name.com’s privacy plan is certainly one of cheapest ones offered among registrars today. Privacy plan duration is offered for 1 up to 10 years.

Private registration is offered for certain extensions only and in Name.com quite a lot of Top Level Domain (TLD) names are not supported by its Whois Privacy plan. This is pretty standard across registrars and shouldn’t be a major cause for alarm.

Privacy on your domains and, luckily, Name.com offers a simple method of adjusting Whois Privacy settings – adding, disabling, renewing and auto-renewing, and others. As an ICANN-accredited registrar, Name.com complies with the organization’s requirement of putting registered domains under it in the publicly accessible Whois database, while at the same time, offering easy options to manage privacy settings for its customers who don’t want their details published in this database.

Features

Not commonly seen in most registrars are offers for search-friendly domain names (ie, names with popular keywords) under Premium Domains. Apart from an exhaustive domain search capability, Name.com also offers services that could compel users to get a complete web building package. Name.com’s website builder is a decent option for those who want to take their hands off building, designing and/or enhancing their commercial websites. This feature is offered with a 14-day free trial, after which you can proceed with a builder plan, with a pricing scheme that can be viewed on the site. Meanwhile, its Rapidpress Wordpress hosting platform is also available to those who operate on a Wordpress website.

Its email service has Google apps connectivity, specifically Gmail, which is highly advantageous to registrants who prefer the Google interface; accompanying Google apps such as Hangouts, Calendar and Google+ as well as all the Google Drive capabilities also come with this service. A 21-day trial period is offered for this product.

Other features at Name.com are SEO Tutor, Mobile Website Builder, Domain Expiration Sync, and Two Step Verification.

Bulk Registrations and Management

Users can search in bulk and even get results for backorders. When searching for several domains, results provide similar available names including new domains that are immediately available for purchase. In addition, bulk searching enables filtering by TLD (top-level domain) or by group extensions: featured, legacy, help/how-to, real estate, professional, social, ccTLDs, interests, business, and date night. This bulk search feature somehow makes it a compelling choice for those who are registering a number of domains.

Domain management can be accessed through the ‘My Account’ tab and clicking on ‘my domains’ which takes the user to all his registered domains. Bulk actions for URL forwarding, editing contacts and nameservers, amending DNS records, locking and unlocking domains, editing auto-renew settings, and changing Whois privacy and Privacy auto-renew settings are also easily found on the user profile. Compared to other registrars, however, bulk management in Name.com can be a bit overwhelming but a relief to the more skilled domain managers and owners.

Access Level and Delegating

Although its account management dashboard is easy enough to access and the domains equally easy to manipulate, a direct menu that would let a manager assign administrator rights to an external user isn’t readily available. Delegating and assigning technical access level is a bit of a headscratcher in Name.com.

This is a clear point of improvement and one that could be made more visible and accessible, hopefully in the near future. The company’s employees’ profiles do seem to exude the aura of a group that would be receptive to ideas and one could hope that this feature might be introduced or improved soon.

Pricing and Coupons

On the affordability scale, Name.com is not likely to fall on the very cheap side although it’s not on the expensive side either. A basic domain registration (eg., a .com extension) cost $10.99 a month. Almost every product comes with a tag price for easy reference. An email registration costs $0.99 a year per address and are also available for increments of 10 and 25 email addresses.

Although not prominently displayed on the site, Name.com also offers promotional rates for cheap domains. A user might want to check out the blog for coupon and other promo updates endorsed by the company’s main promo guy named John Rupp. The ‘Bottoms Rupp’/’Happy Hour’ sales happen every Thursdays, and mostly advertise cut price for new domain registration and other products.

Overall, pricing structure in Name.com is straightforward and making a single or a multiple transaction is fast and easy. Payment options are Mastercard, Visa and American Express, and PayPal.

Customer Service

On the customer support front, Name.com might not have the most immediate assistance. Though they provide a hotline and an email address to contact, a live chat function – often available in a lot of online service providers and a few registrars – is noticeably absent. Users outside of the US should also note that their hotline is available only from Monday to Friday, 8AM- 6PM Mountain Time, Denver.

Name.com Support is in-house and availability of customer service staff is often provided in the support page. Response for queries via email also follows the aforementioned office hours, which is both a good thing and a bad thing: good because a user knows when it is likely a response or a resolution will be provided, and bad because having an issue during out-of-office hours might take a bit of time getting a reply. In addition, phone support during holidays are closed, while email support is open for limited times.

Users expecting instant support through online means might find the lack of customer service chat somehow problematic and/or delayed. Although their support team is quite knowledgeable, users should expect non-urgent resolutions for issues raised.

Management Summary

The company continues to strive for innovation and be on the cutting edge of technology in the web domain market among other domain registrars. The ability to engage in multiple access points also allows Name.com to have a broad customers and user reach. One of its strengths is in bulk registration which is particularly attractive to those requiring a more efficient domain search filtering, allowing advanced search options with its nifty TLD filter and bulk group options.

Name.com is a relatively small sized company which should probably explain the lack of online chat support and a 24/7 support in general. Furthermore, access level delegation ought to be developed. Certain functionalities such as the aforementioned bulk search and management and the reliable domain transfer function, however, make up for these misses. Frequent promo updates could also be encouraging to those looking for both value and efficiency in a domain registration provider. Its transfer tools are among the easiest to navigate and comes with helpful step-by-step instructions for new users. Another plus is its straightforward pricing strategy.

Name.com wouldn’t be the top recommendation to users are who are particularly concerned about getting fast customer support as it might take a while especially for those outside of the US to speak to someone, but Name.com is not such a bad place to start a website and register a domain. It mostly wins most customers by offering a simple and superb user experience that can match even the bigger and more established sites.