Metropol

Whilst I have a decent knowledge of domain names themselves, I'm not too up to speed on costing and whether different companies provide value for money.

I need either a .co.uk or .com (I have a short list of what is available already!) domain, with email addresses included, and at a reasonable price - but I don't mind paying more for a good package.

What company/package would you recommend?

You're actually asking two differnet things - you want a registrar (for your domain name registration) and a host (to store your content on the internet). Obviously, many do both but might as well make the distinction.

I don't think there's much in registrars (except 1&1 don't let you have more than five subdomains which is preposterous), so here's what I've learnt about hosts in my short life through experience:

1&1 - very cheap and very shit, get what you pay for kind of thing
NFSHost - pay as you go (expensive on a per byte basis but if you will only get about 10 hits a month this is by far the cheapest option) and OK
Dreamhost - haven't tried them yet but i intend to soon due to the very promising unlimited hosting prices

Oh, I won't need advice on hosting - I've got that sorted. I should have been more clear - I only need registrar information! I didn't even know the word for it however.

If you want email, you could use Google Apps which is very stable and free, and it is as easy to configure as falling off a log - just forward the registrar's MX records to that address. When I used built in email 1&1's IMAP service was acceptable.

I am really not convinced it matters what registrar you use - all they do is point people's browsers in the right direction. With that in mind I'd recommend 1&1 for your registrar since they are unbelievably cheap (but nothing else). However one limitation of them is that they only support a maximum of five subdomains so if that matters to you, you might want to choose someone else.

We use 1and1 as a registrar, as they point to dreamhost we therefore get unlimited subdomains problem overcome

Incredibly intriguing *because* my 1&1 account controls all the subdomains, with DNS set for each. How exactly do you get more than five subdomains out of their 'net'? Is there some kind of master domain forwarding you can activate?

erm, i just clicked the DNS button and set the name server as dreamhost's and then added it as a new domain in their control panel. no subdomains show up on 1and1, they're all within dreamhost.

So do I, except I get (unwanted) subdomain control too. Here's a pic. Weird.

but denman is showing as forwarding - mine is set as "destination webspace" but with DNS next to it

Aha well spottted. It's actaully not forwarding but it was in the past... I bet that has someting to do with it.

I think I have the inenviable task of a phone call to 1&1 on my hands.

Jovis wrote:Whilst I have a decent knowledge of domain names themselves, I'm not too up to speed on costing and whether different companies provide value for money.

I need either a .co.uk or .com (I have a short list of what is available already!) domain, with email addresses included, and at a reasonable price - but I don't mind paying more for a good package.

What company/package would you recommend?

You might want to give http://www.easily.co.uk a try.

Back when I ran this site, I used Easily for registering/hosting along with my own domain email address.

I found them cheap (although not the cheapest) but they had good technical support along with useful help pages covering common problems.