The cost of doing online business is getting more expensive every day. Various fees are involved just to start up a website ranging from a few dollars to hundreds. Some of these fees are for web site design, hosting, email, software expense, and domain name registration. Although buying a domain name is not the most expensive part of starting a website, it is still a recurring yearly cost that is helpful to avoid if possible. Having your own domain name gives your business respectability so it is a great thing to have. Getting a free domain name and registration from your web host is a great way to avoid paying an initial fee and yearly maintenance. It cuts your expenses for running your business. There are some facts you should know about what is involved and what should be looked for in considering the offers of free domain names.

There are a few methods of obtaining a free domain name registration. Finding out what they are is not difficult. With the use of a few strategies a business or organization can by-pass the difficulties and extra fees charged for registering a domain name. There are many online and also local companies that offer domain name registration along with a hosting service for a website. The features of both are very similar.

Here are few useful tips to get a free domain name:

* While finding an online domain name registration and hosting company always do a thorough research in order to get the best deal available, and this must include free domain name registration. The large business organizations generally enjoy this kind of favour from most of the web hosting companies.

* The best way to obtain a domain name for free from a host company is to use them for the registration of that name along with using their web hosting service, and other options such as email registration, and if available design.

* Hire a local domain registration and hosting company as it is always a better option as they function from within spitting distance, which enable more human contact. Unlike their online counterparts, the local web hosting companies provides the probability of face to face negotiation and bargaining.

* Ask or check the FAQs section of a web host to see if their service offers free domain name registration with privacy. This protects the website from having outside sources attempt to view their privileged information. Many of these companies will alert the client if anyone tries to abuse the service and hack into the customer's information. This is a great protection for being online.

* There are some free TLD domains which you can obtain for viewing a provider's offers and signing up for what you can use thereby gaining points. The more points you earn the more likely you are of obtaining more free TLD domains.

There are quite a few services that offer domain names and offer free names and registrations. You will also find some that give the ability to re-direct your existing domain name to their service. Some will enable an organization to get top-level domains for free. Some of these providers included in the list below:

Freedomain.co.nr

This Free Domain Name Service Provider allows a number of cool features. They provide free Redirection services which are also popularly known as Domain Forwarding service. The other services offered by this online domain name service provider include URL masking services, Path Forwarding as well as Free URL cloaking. Another special feature of this site is that they provide support for Meta Tags and Favicon. This free domain name provider requires a button link back to their main service site.

Dot.tk:

The dot.tk is a leading online free domain name service provider. In fact, it is one of the best free top level domain service provider offering free .tk domains. However, this free domain name expires immediately after 90 days in case the site had less than 25 visitors within this period. One of the major drawbacks of this site is that it has an invisible structure that comes with a popup advertisement.

Uni.cc

This company provides terrific tools for site building and TLD domains as well as their free domain names. The also offer redirection and other options. The only drawback to Uni.cc is that they do not provide hosing, ftp, or email hosting at this time. They are a great source of domain names and redirection for free if you already have website space.

GeoCities

It is one of the most popular free domain name provider site. The for-fee premium web hosting service is introduced by Yahoo! and it provides 3 GB monthly bandwidth limit. However, there are banner or popup advertisements on every page. The services provided by this site include manual for creating a web page, PageBuilder, design tools, PageWizards, File Manager and several other great add-on options.

Google Page Creator

Google is another free sub domain provider if you use their new page creator to build a website. This is still in Beta but it allows for great flexibility and function in order to put up a free web space. There are some drawback such as limited site pages per account, and some occasional bugs due to the development process but it offers many useful tools for building your site. You can also obtain a number of Google emails for use.

Fadlan.com

This service, like Google and yahoo's free sites offers sub domain names for free. Your name would appear before or after these types of names such as yourname.fadlan.com. Fadlan.com also offers free redirection and forwarding. These types of sub domain names are great for non-profit organizations, or personal web pages, and fan sites.

Afraid.org

One of the best features of Afraid.org is the ability to pick from several extension sub domains. You need to sign up at their web site and they will give you many services such as updating your IP redirection. There is a 50 sub domain limit for each individual user. They are often used for domain hosting, free DNS and Dynamic hosting.

C-o.in

C-o.in is another effective free provider of domain names. They also include free URL redirection and sub domain forwarding as a free service and they offer the services in 4 available formats for ease of use.