Can anyone suggest a place where I can [urchase .co.uk domain names at less than £p for 2 years.

It would be nice to be able to make something on these domains (if only a little) as they are the most common for my clients.

The usual going rate is around £9 for 2 years registration but I would have thought that you can get them cheaper if you knew where to look!!!

Any advice or comments welcomed :)

123-reg.co.uk

Thanks for that! How come they are so cheap with 123-reg?

No idea, I can't see how they make anything when you consider Nominet fees are £5+vat and they have to pay the credit card fees.

I guess they must get a good amount of add-on business which makes the difference.

Originally posted by kharmer
Thanks for that! How come they are so cheap with 123-reg?
Because they dont mind losing money of the registrations in the hope that you'll buy some of their other services

Cost price is £5+vat as a Nominet TAG holder and member (£500 fees 1st year, 100/year after that) plus obviously the cost of running your own DNS and admin/manual time, credit-card charges for collecting the money etc

Selling a .co.uk for less than about £6.50/2years gets the company a net profit of about ZERO

Some companiessell at a higher loss - 1&1 for example were selling them for 1.99 - it's a way of egenrating lots of customers, lots of fedback in magazines and forums etc - creating a buzz for people to talk about hem - basically their systems are so sh!te they have to effectively bribe you to become a client - caveat emptor

So it's the usual story with quality - you get what you pay for.

Have 123-reg got a good reputuation for service fullfillment?

Can anyone suggest another place to purchase reasonably cheap .co.uk domains with a good reputation for reliabilty?

http://www.ukreg.com - £5.90
http://www.4dreg.com - £5.58
http://www.123-reg.co.uk - £5.18
http://www.heartinternet.co.uk - £5.18
http://webcentre.lycos.co.uk - £3.88
http://www.oneandone.co.uk - £3.88

Those are the main ones that offer .uk domains at good prices. All will give you free forwarding etc and control panel to manage the domain.
I don't recommend you use 1&1 as to change the nameservers from theirs you have to send them a fax which is a bit annoying when you can get a domain for the same price from Lycos and have full control over the domain.

Originally posted by kharmer
So it's the usual story with quality - you get what you pay for.

Have 123-reg got a good reputuation for service fullfillment?

Can anyone suggest another place to purchase reasonably cheap .co.uk domains with a good reputation for reliabilty?

I've got about 15-20 domains registered there and had no problem, except for a few transfer in's for a couple of customers (who want me to manage their domains as well as hosting them).

The transfer in problem was due the loosing company refusing to change the admin contact before changing the TAG name (highly professional :)) This required a fax to be sent by the domain owner to 123's office, then the change went through OK. Not really a 123 issue, but they seem to handle it efficiently.

Originally posted by kharmer
So it's the usual story with quality - you get what you pay for.

Have 123-reg got a good reputuation for service fullfillment?

Can anyone suggest another place to purchase reasonably cheap .co.uk domains with a good reputation for reliabilty?

I actually use these guys for all my domains, be they .co.uk, .com, .net etc
I know I could get better prices on the .com's from a US based company - especially with the exchange rate as good as it is right now.
However I really trust 123-reg.co.uk
They have never messed anything up, I've never lost a domain, never had any hassle with their support, etc.
I highly recommend them.

This is all great feedback - thanks guys ;)