Hi,

What is the best place to buy or resell .co.uk domains from.

Thanks,

Adam

Hello
If you want to retain some control OpenSRS is OK
But if you want to host .co.uk domains you will really need an IPSTAG
so go direct to nominet and pay the membership fees.

Gordon

£400 setup is a lot for a new company.

I have looked at opensrs but dont like having to fax them to do things to a domain.

Adam

Well
Thats your choices.
Nominet membership is the easiest way and themoney you will save will be recouped quite quickly.

Your only other option is just to buy them at retail through a
company like 123-reg.co.uk
for your customers

Gordon

I had a look at Nominet.

Membership is £400 PLUS vat at 17.5% = £470

Their site also says that to register domains you need a credit account - this may be another £500 if you don't pass their credit checks

the price of domains quoted is £5 + vat = £5.88 But you can register domains via 123-reg for £5.78 + vat = £6.79 (I assume both are for a 2 year registration period - Nominet doesn't say)

So you would need to register an aweful lot of .co.uk domains to make membership of Nominet a viable option

May be it is better to start by registering domains via 123-reg and if volumes are high enough move over to Nominet membership

Yours

Kevin

Hello
That may be the case, but 123reg.co.uk will mail al lyou customers with their hosting offeres (thats why they sell domains for £6.89).

Also, having your own tag makes handling doimains for hosting issues easier. There is another thread where I explain this in more detail.

I know it was a lot of money when we did it but I worked out that we would have saved the joining fees by the savings made in the first 6 months.

I have never heard of anyone having to make a downpayment of £500.
The credit limit is £1000 even for large companies (who have to pay in advance if they wish to go over) but the secret of getting allowed to go over is prompt payment.

Promot payment also helps build a good relationship with them.
I pay by return of post and whenever I need a dead domain credited I just have to phone the woman who deals with my account and she does it immediately.
I also get to exceeed the £1000 limit by a bit most months with no difficulties because they know the payment will arrive.

This is true of all suppliers.
We pay most of our suppliers in cash either by return of post, in advance or by standing order.
Because we are good payers we get lots of extra help, offers and discounts.

Thats just a general tip for those of you starting in business!

Gordon

Hi GordonH

Can you please give details fo your earlier thread.

Thanks

Kevin

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=47335&highlight=nominet

I should say that my OpenSRS sales rep is keen for us to move to using them for .uk and is coming up to Scotland to see me next monday about it.

It shows you how keen they are.
But he will have a tough job persuading me.
We would still need our IPSTAG to do all the incoming domains.

Gordon

Hi GordonH

Thanks for the thread reference

Me thinks looking at Nominet may not be a bad idea.

Can I ask though - I only have a reseller account not my own dedicated server would this cause any problems registering managing domains?

Thanks

Kevin

As long as you have nameservers you will be OK.
Thats all thats required to register domains.

Gordon

Hi GordonH

Thanks for that

Yours

Kevin

Hi GordonH

Sorry to bother you again but I had another look at the Nominet pages and it seems that registering, managing domains is done via secure email. Is there any software that allows you to do that and link it in to a payment system ie PaySystems (Revecom) to automate the whole process? ie Someone buys a domain and upon payment approval the domain is automatically registered for them?

Is there also something that can also provide domain name registrants the opportunity to automatically set/reset nameservers, etc.

123-reg.co.uk have something that does this all automatically (or seemingly so) So it must be possible.

I imagine that this software would need approval by Nominet do they offer such software and at what cost or is there any third party supplier like RegistryRocket out there?

Without this the whole process will become rather messy.

Many thanks

Kevin

Hello
You would need to write your own and its not easy.

It really depends how many domains you register per month.
We do 200 to 300 .co.uk manually
We would need to be doing a lot more to make the expenditure on automation worth it.

Also, the form validation would have to be very tight as Nominet
have variable requirmeents for each field depending on registrant type and other factors selected in other fields.

I have a PHP script which makes it a case of filling out a form
and the formatted mail is sent back to us for PGP signing.
It also allows us to make changes quite quickly.
I don't see the need to automate it.
But if you can do it AND integrate that system with .com and .uk.com then you are more clever than me!

The registrars who run those automated systems have very large fraud margins as well.
I rely on vetting applications manually to look for the tell tale signs of a bad application.

Gordon

Hi GordonH

Thanks again for the info - much appreciated

Yours

Kevin