Small businesses have been warned to ensure they have ownership and administration rights to their website domain names because it can be very difficult to wrest them back from a web agency or reseller if things go wrong.
Michele Neylon, managing director at hosting specialist Blacknight Solutions, said companies needed to be listed as the administrative contact or controller of their domain name to retain control of their Web presence.
John Lehane, director at Storm Web Development, agreed, saying there was a danger a web designer or agency could go out of business or there could be a falling out and the small business would not be able to get the domain name released.
“Some companies hold customers to ransom because they can’t get the domain name released,” he said. “It can be a very difficult process to get the domain name released if the administrator contact isn’t playing ball. We run into that problem all the time.”
Eoin Costello, managing director of Novara echoed Lehane and recommended people checked their domain name details to make sure the agency or reseller had not put its contact details in the administrator section for the domain name.
“You must make sure the administrator contact is you and the e-mail address is yours. If it’s the reseller, it can be extremely difficult to transfer away.”
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