... They have two sites, freeparking.co.uk which has pricing in GBP and domain-parking.net which has pricing in USD...take your pick! Both sites are the same apart from the pricing, infact they are so similar you have to look twice!
Basically they are a domain name registration service.
- ... Read review
Advantages: IP forwarding sub domain capability Disadvantages: steer clear of the centralnic nominet names
...cheaper. They have two sites, freeparking.co.uk which has pricing in GBP and domain-parking.net which has pricing in USD...take your pick! Both sites are the same apart from the pricing, infact they are so similar you have to look twice!
Basically they are a domain name registration service.
- PRICING
.co.uk/.org.uk are £9.99 all inclusive and .com's/.org/.net are £29.98
quoted at the standard 2 year period. ... ...are other domain name registration companies out there which 'appear' cheaper, but if you are not VAT registered, by the time you add on the VAT, any extra charges such as release fees (some companies charge you for moving you domain name) removal of advertising banners from web forwarding, and 'other hidden charges' to make your domain name 'usable', Freeparking is way cheaper! ..that is if you don't just want to sit on the name, in which case others ... more
Freeparking is one of those online companies which does not incur VAT, so for the consumer are 17.5% cheaper. They have two sites, freeparking.co.uk which has pricing in GBP and domain-parking.net which has pricing in USD...take your pick! Both sites are the same apart from the pricing, infact they are so similar you have to look twice!
Basically they are a domain name registration service.
- PRICING .co.uk/.org.uk are £9.99 all inclusive and .com's/.org/.net are £29.98 quoted at the standard 2 year period. Very competitive if you want a 'usable' domain name. There are other domain name registration companies out there which 'appear' cheaper, but if you are not VAT registered, by the time you add on the VAT, any extra charges such as release fees (some companies charge you for moving you domain name) removal of advertising banners from web forwarding, and 'other hidden charges' to make your domain name 'usable', Freeparking is way cheaper! ..that is if you don't just want to sit on the name, in which case others will be (slightly) cheaper.
Prices get cheaper for .com names if you want to hang on and register for a ten year period a decade of use! This will set you back £119.92 in one lump sum.
What do you get for your tenner for a UK name and 30 quid for a .com name?
- ACCESS TO A CONTROL PANEL where you can change your domain name settings with FULL control!
- 10 FORWARDING EMAIL ADDRESSES so you can set up e.g. sales, admin, enquires@yourname.com to forward to bill@btinternet.com, sally@freeserve.com whoever! any email address which is specified at your address, is automatically caught and delivered to your specified default email, so no emails get lost. e.g. if they mispell sales as slaes@youname.com
- WEB FORWARDING (banner free, and it masks the URL) you can specify free webspace which e.g. Freeserve, NTL etc and the webforwarding will automatically mask the true URL in the browser address bar with yourname.com with a frame. It even kills pop up banners from sites such as Geocities! The control panel allows you to specify the metatags description / keywords for assisting in search engine rankings, and the title of the page. This is updated in real time. Bear in mind some cheaper domain registration costs include ad banners above your page or do not mask out the true URL and only forward to your specified URL.
- USE OF YOUR NAME WITH OR WITHOUT WWW. I personally think domain names which don't work without WWW...boring!
- and what other companies DON'T provide:
- IP FORWARDING (banner free) This is far more useful than web forwarding as it allows users to bookmark pages. It is also better suited to getting higher rankings in search engines as IP forwarding does NOT use frames unlike webforwarding - however this requires webspace with a unique IP address. Most free webspace with ISP dialup accounts or those with Geocities, Angelfire, Yahoo etc do not give you an IP address. So this function is primarily aimed at those people who have paid for hosting. With IP forwarding you can easily point serveral domain names to the same site.
- UNLIMITED SUBDOMAINS e.g. abc.youname.com, xyz.yourname.com This allows you to use an argubly tider configuration of your name instead of a sub directory. e.g. download.yourname.com rather than yourname.com/download. A subdomain also allows you to use certain third party turnkey solutions such as search, directory, advertising solutions. so search.yourname.com could point to your chosen search providers servers. Ciao use a subdomain for the UK site uk.ciao.com
- ABILITY TO CHANGE YOUR MAILSERVER, you can switch your name to use a third party's mailservice and provide a hotmail type service, where your end users can sign up and use webmail.
Those of you less technical are probably thinking...what is he on (about)?!? sorry folks, this an opinion focused on this site/service rather than the ABC's of domain names which would make this opinion incredibly long but even more incredibly boring for those not technically minded and put everyone to zzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZ
OTHER: I would only recommend users to register the .com, .org, .co.uk, and .org.uk names and NOT the other eu.com, us.com etc names which they offer as these are (in my opinion) technically not Top Level Domains and are 'subdomains' of .com, - a business (centralnic.com) has purchased some short .com names e.g. us.com, eu.com, no.com, gb.net, uk.com and is selling the subdomains of these, so the real value of this names is much lower, yet the purchase price much higher! £64.99 for 2 years! you can get 2 real .com names for that! (my advice) only buy the centralnic (nomination) names as a last resort if you can't get the name you want from the normal .co.uk and .com
If you want to transfer in your existing domain name to make use of the IP forwarding and subdomain capabilities the tranfer in fee is £9.99. There is no fee to transfer away.
- PURCHASING requires you to register an account where you then access all your domain names from one control panel, it also allows you to set up registrant names for use later sparing you to fill in the details again. The control panel system allows you to sell names to your clients as Freeparking never contact the registrant and bill you directly, so you can bill your clients whatever you want..(ahem within reason)
Your card is authorised in real time and seconds later you get confirmation in your email box of the order, and confirmation again when the registry has accepted the registration. It usually takes about 12-36 hours for the domain names to become active.
TECHNICAL support is only via email but is reasonably quick within 12-24 hours, thanks Sam if you manage to read this!
- CONCLUSION I personally haven't been able to find an alternative to Freeparking as I can't find anyone on Earth who offers IP forwarding, with subdomains. So if you are after these features there is NO alternative, but if you are just wanting to sit on a name (for whatever reason) then the cheapest out there is about £6.80 inc VAT or so for a UK name, compared to Freeparking's marginally more expensive but more flexible £9.99
Beware of companies which price in months! UK domains are sold per 2 years.
Advantages: Cheap and Efficient way of getting your own domain Disadvantages: Nowt
This lot provide an absolutely excellent domain name registration service, not only that their after sales service is excellent, and not only that the site and control panel, once you’ve registered is a doddle to use as well. There are a couple of other in depth opinions that detail the site it it’s minutiae, so I’ll just concentrate on the things that make this very attractive, especially to someone who doesn’t want a lot ... ...address….
Go to the site (there’s a link off my site which is www.singy.co.uk), and sign up. You have the option to check if you’re name is already taken. If it’s not you can buy a co.uk name for 9.99 GBP for two years using any of you basic credit and debit cards.
For .com and the like you can register for up to ten years if you’re feeling particularly flush (though this will cost you 120 GBP, also 9 and 10 year subscriptions ...
mikeydred 09.05.2002
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of freeparking.co.uk
Advantages: A fast, efficient, professional service Disadvantages: None
While not offering web hosting as such, www.freeparking.co.uk offers one of the best domain registration services I have come across.
The prices are reasonably standard, starting from £9.99 for a .co.uk domain name for two years, up to around £29.99 for a .com for two years. Many different TLDs (Top Level Domains) are available, and you can usually choose the length of your registration, depending on which TLD you are going for.
The site also offers ... ...three words will search all combinations of them (including joined up and joined by dashes) in all the TLDs they provide. It also provides 'whois' info for domains that are already registered (so you can contact the people who have registered them, if you want).
After you buy, the service gets even better. Through their very fast website, you have complete access to modify your web forwarding (ie where your domain name points to, either another ...
digitalburn 06.03.2001 (09.04.2001)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of freeparking.co.uk
Advantages: Web forwarding, ease of registration, cheap Disadvantages: Automated support response, poor email forwarding service, difficulty in coordinating contacts and admin names.
The freeparking.co.uk site is great for registering cheap domain names easily. It is not so good at email forwarding (emails often bounce back) and when you put in a support request you get an automated response from various FAQ-bots (you'll get to know them by name!) which is irrelevant to the question you asked. You then have to write back saying please read my question and then they MIGHT respond with a vaguely relevant answer but not always answering ... ...a support request with them after about 6 email exchanges when I just know they are not going to respond with anything that makes any sense.
You can't coordinate your contacts in there which means that you have this massive list of contacts from years ago and domains long-sold-on that you can't delete. And if you've used the same name (ie your own) for all of them then you won't be able to tell them apart during the registration process and will ...
Frisbee78 05.11.2005
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of freeparking.co.uk
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Quick review of freeparking.co.uk
I've had this domain name service (for at least 7 years now) and I've not had many problems.
Recently I renewed one of my domain names for 9 years to avoid having to do this frequently and they have not performed the renewal correctly.
My domain name is 'pendingDelete' in the registry and I have effectively lost a lot of money. If they wanted to fix this, they apparently could.
Support (which is only by tickets) used to be ok and they used to reply to e-mails but now, they are frankly ignoring everything I send them.
DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY. Go for someone bigger who are able to actually support you.
Mark ...
demonfishbxoer 06.11.2009
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of freeparking.co.uk
Advantages: Good user maintenance portal Disadvantages: They sold my domain 3 years before expiry
I was happy with freeparking until a recent experience where their incompetence was responsible for the loss of my domain.
When it came to renew my .info domain I paid for the 5 year option (£41). Just over two years later I find no email coming through and I find someone else now owns my domain!
Now we find the downside of freeparking, the only way to contact them is via the support call system. So I raise a support call asking if someone has ... ..."Support call closed - Unfortunately the domain name was put back on the market for resale".
A further support call with my original invoice paid for 5 years got a response "I can only refund to the card the payment was taken and your Delta expired on 12/06"!!
Would anyone really want to buy a domain from these people? ...
Pictish 16.05.2008
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of freeparking.co.uk
