I’m prompted to write this after a recent experience with a client who ignored my once yearly invoice for Domain and Hosting renewal a little too long (one of many!). If you have a website then you will almost definitely get a yearly or monthly bill from either your hosting company or web designer for 2 things at least:
- Domain or Website Address Renewal
- Website Hosting
You never actually own your web site address you just rent it for periods but once you are renting it no one else can have it.
Your hosting is also rented and this is basically website space you rent so the files/pages (and emails) on your site have somewhere to exist and be shown to the world.
You need to make sure you pay these bills as soon as the invoice comes in because if you don’t and possibly without warning, your web address could expire automatically and your site will go down. If it’s expired longer than the few weeks grace period you get then you’ll be faced with a hefty bill to recover it. If you wait a couple more months you can avoid the hefty bill and your address might come back up for registration but anyone else could buy it too. All this time your site will be down.
NB – Don’t rely on your web or hosting company to pay the bill on your behalf, sort things out for you or chase you too much for the money. They will often have a lot less to lose than you if your site goes down.
I personally have a policy of not paying to renew clients domains/hosting until I receive payment first.
Leon.
Reverb Studios Design 