How to Buy a Domain Name in 2026: 7 Steps and the Renewal Trap to Avoid
How to buy a domain name in 2026, step by step: what a domain actually is, what you need before checkout, what a .co.uk or .com should cost, the 14 add-ons registrars push and which to tick, how to switch on privacy and auto-renew, what happens if you forget, and how an AI agent registers and connects the name for you.
You have settled on the business name. You type it into a registrar, the .com is there for 1p, and your finger is on the button. Then the small print mentions a three-year purchase, a privacy add-on, a mailbox, an SSL certificate, a website builder and "domain protection", and 1p has become £80 before you have a website to put on it.
Buying a domain is a ten-minute job when you know what you are paying for. This guide explains how to buy a domain name in seven steps: what you are actually buying, what it should cost, what to fill in, what to tick at the checkout and what to leave alone. Prices were read from the sellers' own pages on 7 October 2026 and the rules come from the two bodies that set them, ICANN for endings such as .com and Nominet for .uk.
Want the name searched, registered, connected and secured in one message? Ask an agent on Jobbit: the domain search is free and needs no account, you get 100 free credits a day with no card, and Go is £7 a month for one small app on your own domain.
How we checked this guide
- Prices from the sellers' own pages. GoDaddy UK, Namecheap, 123-Reg, Porkbun and Cloudflare's pricing pages and Jobbit's live search, all read on 7 October 2026.
- Rules from the registries. ICANN's Expired Registration Recovery Policy and Transfer Policy for .com and the other global endings, and Nominet's rules for .uk.
- Wholesale prices as the floor. What registrars themselves pay tells you when a retail price is a loss-leader.
- No invented averages. Where a figure is a report from a secondary source, the text says so.
What you are actually buying
A domain name is a lease, not a purchase. You register it for one to ten years, it is yours for as long as you keep renewing, and if you stop it goes back into the pool. Three parties are involved:
- The registry runs the ending. Verisign runs .com and .net, Nominet runs everything that ends in .uk, and the Government of Anguilla owns .ai. The registry sets the wholesale price and the rules.
- The registrar sells it to you. GoDaddy, Namecheap, 123-Reg, IONOS, Cloudflare, Porkbun and Jobbit are all registrars or resellers. They add a margin and, often, a basket of add-ons.
- You, the registrant, own the registration. Whatever the seller's dashboard looks like, the name is registered to you, and you can move it or point it anywhere.
The domain is only the address. A website, email and hosting are separate, and you do not have to buy any of them from the company that sells you the name. You can register a domain today and leave it empty for a year.
The scale is bigger than most people expect. Verisign's industry brief counted 401.6 million registered domains at the end of June 2026, the first time the total passed 400 million, and Nominet manages about 10.4 million names ending in .uk.
What a domain should cost in 2026
Registrars pay a wholesale fee per year. Verisign charges $10.26 for a .com, rising to $10.97 on 1 November 2026, plus a $0.20 ICANN fee. Nominet charges £3.90 a year for a .co.uk or .uk. Everything above that is the registrar's margin, and anything far below it is a loss-leader that will renew at full price. Porkbun and Cloudflare sell close to wholesale, at about $11 and $10.46 for a .com, with the same price at renewal.
On Jobbit the price you see in the search is the price you renew at. When we searched on 7 October 2026 a .co.uk or .uk was £11.88 a year and a .com £20.42, with WHOIS privacy, DNS hosting and HTTPS included and nothing else to add at the checkout. The fair comparison is always the year-two price plus the add-ons you actually need, and our comparison of the best place to buy a domain in the UK sets the big registrars side by side on exactly that.
The 7 steps
Step 1: decide the name and the ending
Short, sayable, no hyphens, no numbers, and spelt the way people will guess. Our guide on how to choose a domain name has ten rules and the checks to run first. For the ending, a UK business that sells in the UK is well served by .co.uk, a business with customers abroad usually wants the .com, and the two together cost less than a month of most software. The differences between .co.uk, .uk, .com and the newer endings are in our guide to which domain extension to buy.
Step 2: check it is free, and not someone else's brand
Any registrar search shows availability. Before you pay, spend ten minutes on two free government searches. Search for a trade mark on GOV.UK shows whether a registered mark already covers the name in your line of business, and the Companies House name checker shows whether a company already trades under it. A domain that infringes a trade mark can be taken from you through a dispute process, and the cost of rebranding later is far higher than ten minutes now.
Step 3: pick where to buy it
You have three kinds of seller. A plain registrar such as Namecheap, Porkbun or Cloudflare sells the name and little else. A website platform such as Squarespace, Wix or Shopify sells a domain alongside the site, which is convenient while you stay on the platform. A builder-plus-registrar such as Jobbit registers the name and connects it to the app or site the agent builds, with DNS and HTTPS done for you. Pick on the renewal price, whether privacy is free, and how much work it leaves you.
Step 4: fill in the registrant details truthfully
The checkout asks for a name, postal address, email and phone. ICANN requires accurate contact details for .com and the other global endings, and Nominet validates names and addresses for .uk, so an invented address can get the domain suspended. Use a business email you will still own in five years, not an address at an old employer or an internet provider you might leave. For a .uk domain registered from outside the United Kingdom, Nominet asks for a UK service address.
Step 5: go through the checkout with the list below
The next section lists the fourteen things a checkout page offers and which are worth ticking. The short version: privacy yes, auto-renew yes, everything else no until you have a reason.
Step 6: switch on auto-renew and write the date down
Set auto-renew on the day you buy and put the renewal date in the calendar you actually look at. A domain lapse is the most expensive cheap mistake in small business, because the website, the email and the Google listing all go dark at once.
Step 7: connect it to something
A domain does nothing until it points at a website or an email service. That is done with DNS records, and our guide on how to connect a domain to your website walks through the records Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, WordPress.com and Jobbit ask for. If you do not have a site yet, the guide to getting a free website covers ten ways to get one.
14 things on the checkout page, and whether to tick them
| Add-on | What it is | Tick it? | What it should cost | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WHOIS or domain privacy | Hides your name and address from the public registry | Yes | Free | Free at Jobbit, Namecheap, Porkbun and Cloudflare; a yearly fee at some others |
| Auto-renew | Charges your card before the domain expires | Yes | Free | Keep the card details current |
| Multi-year registration | Pay for 2 to 10 years now | Only at a fair yearly price | Years 2 onwards at the renewal price | A 1p first year that forces three years is a £38 purchase, not a 1p one |
| Transfer lock | Stops the domain being moved without your say-so | Yes | Free | On by default almost everywhere |
| Email mailbox | An inbox at your domain | Only if you need one now | £1 to £6 a month per user | You can add email later from any provider |
| Website builder trial | A site editor tied to the registrar | No | Free trial, then a monthly fee | Decide on the site separately |
| Hosting bundle | Server space for a website | No, for now | £3 to £15 a month | Needed only once you have a site that needs it |
| SSL certificate | The padlock in the browser | No | Free | Every serious host issues one automatically |
| Domain protection or ownership protection | Extra steps before changes | Rarely | £5 to £20 a year | The free transfer lock covers most of it |
| Premium DNS | Faster or more resilient name servers | No | £2 to £5 a month | Standard DNS is fine for a small business |
| Backorder | A bid on a taken name if it ever lapses | Only if you are chasing a specific name | £10 to £30 per name | GoDaddy retired its own backorder service in October 2025 |
| Visibility or SEO add-on | A listing or scan with a vague promise | No | £1 to £10 a month | Not a search ranking factor |
| Extra endings | The same name in .net, .org, .info and more | Usually no | Full price each | The .co.uk and .uk pair is the one worth considering |
| Brand monitoring | Alerts when similar names are registered | No | £5 to £15 a month | A free alert on the name in Google does the job |
The prices in the table are the ranges we saw on the pages checked on 7 October 2026, not promises about any one seller. What matters is the pattern: the two free items are the ones to tick, and the paid items can all be bought later, from anyone, if a real need appears.
The renewal trap, in numbers
Take a .com bought on GoDaddy's UK site on the terms shown on 7 October 2026. Year one costs £0.01, but the offer requires a three-year purchase at £18.99 for each further year, so the bill at the checkout is £37.99 for three years. Namecheap's .com costs $10.98 in the first year and $14.98 after that, which is $40.94 over three years before the $0.20 ICANN fee each year. Neither is a scandal; both are the normal shape of the market, where the first year is the bait and the renewal is the business.
The habit that protects you is simple. Before you buy, find the renewal price, multiply it by three, and compare that number across sellers. A domain is a decision you live with for years, and the first-year price is the one number that will never matter again.
What happens if you forget to renew
For .com and the other global endings, ICANN's rules require your registrar to remind you about a month before expiry, about a week before, and again within five days after. You can still renew at the normal price during the registrar's renewal period, but the site goes dark for at least the last eight days before deletion and shows an "expired" notice. After deletion comes a 30-day redemption period in which you can get the name back for a fee the registrar sets. Reports put GoDaddy's at about $80 and Namecheap's at $149, so it is a bill worth avoiding. After that the name drops and anyone can register it.
For .uk, Nominet's timeline is kinder. Your website and email keep working for 30 days after expiry, the domain is then suspended, and it is cancelled about 90 days after the expiry date. During that time you renew at the normal price and there is no redemption fee. Jobbit emails you 30 days before renewal and charges a saved card 14 days before if auto-renew is on.
The scams that start the day you own a domain
Your registration appears in public records, and a small industry reads them. Action Fraud, the UK's reporting centre, lists the warning signs: a renewal notice that looks official but comes from a company you have never dealt with, an invoice for a domain you do not use, and a call out of the blue saying someone else is about to buy "your" name in another ending unless you pay now. Nominet has warned about letters of this kind aimed at .uk owners.
The defence is a rule: you renew only through the dashboard of the company you bought from, never from a letter or an email link. If a notice worries you, log in to that dashboard and check the expiry date yourself. Report fraud attempts to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040. Our guide to AI scams aimed at small businesses covers the newer, cleverer versions.
How an AI agent helps you buy a domain
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Manus and Meta's Muse can all suggest names and explain what a registrar means by an A record. An agent that can act takes the job to the end.
- Searches across endings. Give it the business name and it reports which of .co.uk, .uk, .com and the rest are free, with the live price for each.
- Runs the two checks. It searches the trade mark register and Companies House for the name and tells you what it found before you spend a penny.
- Registers and connects it. On Jobbit the agent registers the domain, hosts the DNS zone, issues the HTTPS certificate and connects the name to the site or app it has built, with privacy included and no add-ons to decline.
- Sets up the email records. Bind the domain as a sender domain and the MX, SPF and DKIM records are created and verified for you.
- Keeps the calendar. It records the renewal date and reminds you, on top of the registrar's own emails.
- Builds the thing the domain is for. The Free plan gives 100 credits a day with no card, and Go at £7 a month keeps one small app live on your own domain.
Your first week
- Day 1: write down three name options and the ending you want. Say each one down the phone to a friend and keep the one they spell correctly.
- Day 2: run the trade mark and Companies House searches on your shortlist.
- Day 3: compare the renewal price, not the first-year price, at two or three sellers, and check that privacy is free.
- Day 4: buy it, tick privacy and auto-renew, decline the rest, and put the renewal date in your calendar.
- Day 5: connect it to a site or a holding page, or ask the agent on Jobbit to search, register and connect the name in one go.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to buy a domain name in the UK?
Registrars pay Nominet £3.90 a year for a .co.uk and Verisign $10.26 for a .com, so a fair retail price in 2026 is roughly £6 to £13 a year for a .co.uk and £9 to £20 for a .com. First-year offers of 1p or 99p are real but renew at the full price, often with a multi-year purchase attached.
Can I buy a domain name without a website?
Yes. A domain is only the name. You can register it today, leave it parked and connect a website or email months later. On Jobbit a registered domain sits in your dashboard until you connect it to an app.
Do I need to buy hosting with my domain?
No. Hosting, email and the website are separate products, and you can buy them from different companies or not at all until you need them. A registrar that insists on a bundle is selling, not advising.
Can I buy a domain name permanently?
No. Domains are registered for one to ten years at a time and renewed for as long as you want them. Auto-renew is the closest thing to permanent ownership.
What details do I need to buy a domain?
Your name, a postal address, an email address and a phone number, plus a payment card. The details must be accurate, because the registries check them, and privacy protection keeps them out of the public record.
How long does it take to buy a domain name?
Searching and paying takes about five minutes. A new domain usually resolves within minutes once connected, although registrars and platforms quote up to 48 hours for DNS changes to reach every network.
Can an AI agent buy a domain for me?
On Jobbit it can search the endings, check the name, register it, host the DNS, issue the certificate and connect it to the site it builds, all from one message. Searching is free, the Free plan gives 100 credits a day with no card, and Go is £7 a month for one small app on your own domain.