Are you master of your own domain?

No, I’m not talking Seinfeld here. ;-) Do you own your internet domain? I thought I did, but when I purchased it, I made a huge mistake — I got it through Google when I set up Google Apps. Don’t get me wrong — I love Google Apps! What I don’t love is what happens when you purchase a domain through Google while signing up for Google Apps…

When you purchase a domain as part of the signup process, Google assigns the domain to one of 7 different partners on an automated basis and it falls into some automated bit bucket. In reality, the process is like the ‘Hotel California‘ — you know, you can check in any time you want but you can never leave. I recently spent the better part of a month trying to get my corporate domain transferred to GoDaddy — after two failed attempts, I finally became master of my domain a week ago today.

How can you avoid this nightmare? By all means use Google Apps, but purchase your domain through your favorite hosting provider where you will have full control over the domain THEN make the necessary changes from there. Me? I prefer GoDaddy although I have tried HostGator and they have a great product too [although they charge too much for their domains, imho]! If you want corporate emails or your own website and this is all Greek to you, then give me a call and I’ll walk you through it — I’ll help you avoid the same mistake I made…