Buy domain names at Gandi

Buy a domain name, and it becomes the cornerstone of everything you build online and the foundation you build your website on. To put it simply, your domain is your address on the web. It is how users find not only your website, but also your email address and any other services you might associate with it.

Technically, a domain name links a human-readable name (your domain name) to a computer-readable address (a series of numbers known as an IP address).

Need help choosing your domain name? Our domain name search tool suggests alternatives that we think will be the most relevant for you. And if you want to get an especially good deal on a cheap domain name, you can find the best deals available right now on our Promotions page.

The best way to choose a domain name is to pick one that meets all four of these criteria:

• Meaningful
• Easy to remember
• No strange spelling or grammatical irregularities
• Descriptive

The best way to approach choosing a domain name is to think about how you will use it. You will probably share it on social networks, announce it verbally to your friends and family, maybe print it on business cards, or post it on billboards. At the same time, people will probably find you through search engine queries. Check the availability of your ideal domain with our domain name search tool or check who owns it with our Whois service.

The first thing you need to do when you start creating a website or online store is to choose a domain name, do a search on your domain name availability, and register it. How do domain names work? Every domain name is registered or "bought" for a period of 1 to 10 years from a domain registry, which manages domain endings (.net, .fr, .com, .org, etc.).

Check to see if your ideal domain name is available using our domain name search tool. You'll immediately see a confirmation screen that shows whether or not the domain name you searched is available. If it is, you can add it directly to your shopping cart and buy your domain name!

Here is, generally, how domain name registration works. Registries manage and sell domain names under the domain endings (.net, .fr; .com, .org, etc.) they are responsible for. Registrars, like Gandi, are accredited by these registries to sell domain names with each of these domain endings to end users (individuals, small businesses, large companies, associations, etc.). An end user, then, will buy a domain name from a registrar, where they can do a domain name search of every domain ending. Once registered, a domain name is associated with an Owner Contact, who becomes the owner of the domain name for a specific period of time. If a domain name appears as "unavailable" in our search results, that's because it's already registered to someone else. You can check who owns it using our Whois serviceor look for alternatives using our domain name search tool.

So you want to create a website, but the domain name you wanted is already taken and you don't want to "fall back" on another domain ending or use a different name. You have a few options, including finding the owner thanks to the Whois and offering to buy the domain name from them. The Whois is a directory that lists the technical and contact information of domain names, created when a domain name is registered with a registrar, such as Gandi. The whois contains information about the registrar, the registration and expiration date, and especially the update date, which is the last modification made to the domain name. This is a good indicator to tell you whether the domain name is active or dormant. Then you can try to contact the owner. The whois is not always the solution, though, since it isn't always kept up to date (if a contact changes, for example), but especially because GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) prevents registrars from publishing the contact details of an owner (if not a company) without their consent. As a last resort, you can try to contact the owner through the contact page most websites have.

A domain name is an essential element to any website. To host a website, you should be sure to buy a domain name so that your website has an address. You'll also need to buy website hosting services for your website. We offer different hosting packs that each correspond to different levels of use. When you have your hosting service, that will give you access to the FTP server, which requires an address (000000@sftp.dc0.gpaas.net), user (username), and password, where you can upload your site's files.