Nominet membership/TAG

[dee]

I know there a lots of experienced domainers and TAG holders on here, and wondered if someone would mind explaining whats required to become a TAG holder. I'd basically like to be able to catch my own domains directly via the api so im not relying on hand reg via my usual domain account (Gdaddy)

What are the costs involved , and in fact the costs of reg'ing a domain. For instance on G daddy I can hand reg a co.uk domain for 8 or 9 quid. I seem to remember reading somewhere on nominet site its over 20 to do via them ...which doesnt make sense to me , but hoping im wrong.

Thanks all.

 

[baldidiot]

All costs are listed here: http://registrars.nominet.uk/namesp...n-management/new-registrars/fees/fee-schedule

Just basically hand them some money and let them run some checks on you.

It's £400 to sign up plus £100 a year. Domains are then £3.75 a year.

 

[vu4kata]

+VAT

 

[baldidiot]

+VAT

Oh yeah, plus VAT, of course.

 

[dee]

Thank you ! Appreciated.

 

[Admin]

I find it extremely useful to have a tag and membership from a management and cost perspective. If you have any more questions just shout, plenty of tag holders here and @invincible is around for any nitty gritty details.

 

[dee]

@admin Thank you ! I guess the initial 400 is a one off and not every year ?

 

[lazarus]

Yes, its one time payment of £400 + VAT, Then you have your annual subscription of £100 + VAT per year

So....
First year £400 + £100 +VAT - (£600 Inc VAT)
Next Year/s £100 +VAT - (£120 Inc VAT)

Access to the DAC is another £25 +VAT - (£30 Inc VAT)

 

[dee]

Sorry.... another question . I've just realised that i guess id have to deal with running my own nameservers etc wouldnt i ? Theres no way of doing that via Nominet is there ? How do you tag holders deal with routing domains etc / forwarding / etc

 

[ian]

Sorry.... another question . I've just realised that i guess id have to deal with running my own nameservers etc wouldnt i ? Theres no way of doing that via Nominet is there ? How do you tag holders deal with routing domains etc / forwarding / etc

Nominet do not host nameservers, but you can point to nameservers of any existing service. Alternatively, as I've started using recently, dnsmadeeasy is a nice alternative.

 

[lazarus]

Depends what you want to do with your domains ?

 

[dee]

@lazarus Either point towards my own server if buiding a website, or parking nameserver if holding. Can you do that ?

 

[danielcoates]

Another thing to consider is you can save a little money if you wait until February, the annual membership fee is halved for new members, meaning it would only be £450 + VAT total, Nominet do this because membership renewed annually at the same time every year, and your only getting half a years membership.

 

[lazarus]

Yea sure, Do you have DNS running on your server ie BIND ? If not you can sign up to a service like www.dnsmadeeasy.com to handle the DNS which in turn resolves to your webserver.

Yes you can specify your nameservers per domain from your Nominet control panel.

So for just parking domains you can just specify the nameservers of the parking site from with in Nominet.

 

[dee]

Thanks all. Very helpful

 

[Edwin]

These days there are a lot of companies that seem to offer free DNS (probably in the hope of upselling more sophisticated/other services). Whether they're reliable or not is another issue, but a Google around the topic of "free DNS" might turn up something useful. If you're not relying on the domain for something mission critical, a free solution may be enough for you to point additional domains to your site.

Here are a couple of links to get you started. It's worth trying to find some reviews to see which services are likely to be more reliable.
https://www.namecheap.com/domains/freedns.aspx
https://www.keycdn.com/blog/best-free-dns-hosting-providers/

 

[dee]

Thanks all for the great info. I reckon if you can change nameservers via Nominet control panel then should be fine. It'll only ever be at my hosting or parking so shouldnt need anything more. Cheers for the help

 

[lazarus]

I have not looked into the free ones. Id say make sure that at least one of the servers is located in the UK.

Depending on how much you want to get your hands dirty.. you could build your own "authoritative" DNS server but its not for the faint-hearted.
Mine took around a day to get working properly. You would also require root access to your server.

 

[baldidiot]

Thanks all for the great info. I reckon if you can change nameservers via Nominet control panel then should be fine. It'll only ever be at my hosting or parking so shouldnt need anything more. Cheers for the help

Yeah you can enter nameservers in the control panel, but that's about all you can do. So if you're pointing to a host or custom ns, it's not an issue.

If you need control over the DNS records for whatever reason we use godaddy premium dns: https://uk.godaddy.com/hosting/premium-dns - relatively cheap (few quid a month I think) and never had any issues.