Is It Possible To Get A Domain Name For Free?

Date First Published: 14th August 2023

Topic: Computer Networking

Subtopic: Network Identifiers

Article Type: Computer Questions & Answers

Difficulty Level: 5/10

Learn about whether it is possible to get a domain name for free in this article.

A common question that comes up on web hosting forums is how to get a domain name for free. The answer is that getting a domain name for free is almost impossible and it is extremely unlikely that you will find a way to get one free of charge. The reason why domain names are not free of charge is that they cost money for domain registrars to register. Every time a domain is registered, that domain registrar has to pay a fee to the registry and an organisation called ICANN, which is the organisation that domain registrars must be accredited by. For a .com domain name, the fee to VeriSign, the registry of .com domain names is around £7 and the fee to ICANN is around £0.14. The fees are also fixed.

These fees are necessary for running the services needed to operate the registry, like the nameservers and the WHOIS servers and the organisations also want to make a profit. No sensible domain registrar is going to give away domain names for completely free. It would cost them a lot of money with no clear way of getting that money back. When registering a domain name, most of the money goes to the registry rather than the domain registrar.

In addition, if all domain names were free, there would be almost no domain names available to register now as people would be able to take as many as they want without any payment. If you see a domain registrar offering domains with well-known extensions for free, like .com, .org, or .net, it is very likely that it's a scam. There are some fake domain registrars around that claim to offer free domain names when they don't actually offer any domain name registration services just to collect people's details.

Are There Any Free Domain Registrars?

As stated above, domain names are not free because they cost money for domain registrars to register. But, there was one registrar that offered free domain names, called Freenom. It offered free domain names with less common extensions, including .gq, .ga, .cf, .ml, and .tk. Freenom got sued by Meta in March 2023 for ignoring abuse complaints about domain names used for phishing purposes that were registered with them, and ignoring cybersquatting violations. It is not possible to register new domains with them. Also, any domain names registered with them are down as the governments of the country-code domain extensions have reclaimed them and have no intent to allow free registrations again. This means that all free domain names are gone and users won't be able to get them back or register them again.

Hosting providers often say that they offer 'free' domains if you host your website with them, but that always comes with something else that has to be paid with it, such as paid hosting, so you are still paying for the domain name anyway. This is why the word 'free' is a little misleading there. The domain name is basically bundled in the paid hosting package.

Some domain registrars may offer a raffle for users to get free domain names. However, the chances of winning are often very low and the free domain name is often only for one year. They may also offer a referral program and reward users with a free domain name if they refer enough new users, but that is also usually just for one year and it can take a long time to refer lots of people.

Overall, domain names are often very affordable, at around £10 a year and buying a domain name from a trustworthy and well-established domain registrar will save you a lot of hassle in the long run rather than trying to find an insensible and even fraudulent domain registrar that claims to give away domain names for free.

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