Registered in your company name
The single most important thing on this page. Your company, your registrar account, your login. An agency-registered domain effectively controls your website and your email, and recovering it is difficult.
India
Domains and hosting the decisions people get wrong once.
Two decisions made in ten minutes at the start of a project, both of which are painful to reverse and both of which agencies routinely make on your behalf.
Overview
Domains
Register your domain in your own company name with your own registrar login, never through an agency's account. For hosting, what matters is server response time under load, whether you can access it directly, and whether backups exist and have been tested. Both decisions are hard to reverse and easy to get right at the start.
Which extension
A .com if you can get it, or .in or .co.in if you serve India primarily. Country extensions carry a mild geographic signal and are trusted domestically. Extension matters far less than memorability.
Auto-renew and a current card
Expired domains are among the most avoidable disasters in business, and they usually happen because the renewal notice went to someone who left. Enable auto-renew and keep the payment method current.
Registrar lock and privacy
Lock prevents unauthorised transfers. Privacy keeps your details out of public WHOIS. Both take a minute and both are usually off by default.
Keep the account email on a durable address
Not a personal address and not one tied to a departing employee. Losing access to the registrar email is how domain recovery becomes a legal problem.
Check what you have now
Run a WHOIS lookup on your own domain today. If the registrant is not your company, that is the most urgent thing on your list this week.
What to avoid
Hosting
| What matters | Why | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Time to First Byte | Decides whether front-end work can help | Under 600ms under load |
| Access in your own name | Otherwise you cannot migrate | Can you log in to cPanel today |
| Backups, and restores | Backups nobody has restored are a hypothesis | Ask for a test restore |
| Staging environment | So changes are not tested live | Included or available |
| Support response time | Matters at 2am, not in the sales call | Stated in writing |
| Room to grow | Stores need more than brochure sites | Resource limits stated |
Cheap shared hosting is adequate for a small brochure site and struggles with a store, because cart and checkout pages cannot be cached the way content pages can.
Detail
What to ask before you hire
| Ask them | Good answer | Walk away if |
|---|---|---|
| Who owns the site and accounts? | You do, in your own name | Accounts in the agency's name |
| Can I open three live examples? | URLs you can check yourself | Screenshots and a PDF |
| What is explicitly not included? | A written list with change pricing | Everything is included |
| How will we know it worked? | A metric agreed before work starts | Activity reports |
The exclusions question decides whether the final invoice matches the quote.
FAQ
Common questions
Whose name should my domain be registered in?
Your company's, with your own registrar login. This is the single most common ownership trap in this market. An agency-registered domain controls your website and your email, and recovering it can require a formal dispute.
Should I use .com or .in?
A .com if available, or .in and .co.in if you serve India primarily. Country extensions carry a mild geographic signal and are well trusted domestically. Memorability matters more than the extension itself.
How do I check who owns my domain?
Run a public WHOIS lookup on it, and separately try logging in to the registrar directly. If you cannot log in, you do not control it regardless of what anyone has told you.
What hosting specification do I actually need?
Focus on Time to First Byte under load rather than advertised resources. Under 600 milliseconds is a reasonable target. For a store you need more headroom, because cart and checkout cannot be cached like content pages.
Is it fine for my agency to host the site?
If the account is in your name and you can log in and migrate without their cooperation, yes. Agency reseller hosting you cannot access is where many businesses discover they cannot leave.
How do I know my backups work?
Restore one to a staging environment. Until you have done that, you have a backup schedule rather than a backup. This is the step almost everyone skips and the only one that proves anything.
Next step
Tell us what you need.
Send us what you are trying to fix and we will tell you what it takes, what it costs, and whether we are the right people for it. If we are not, we will say so.