Looking for ways to check if a domain name is available? Our comprehensive post includes a review of multiple ways that you can check the availability of a domain name. This post may contain affiliate links.
Domain Name Availability Check
Are you interested in finding out whether the domain name you have in mind is currently registered or might be available? There are two simple ways you can go about checking the status of a domain name. One way is to do a search for the domain name using a domain name registrar.
The other way is to use a whois lookup. While both will work, searching for a domain name with the help of a domain name registrar has the added benefit of allowing you to register the domain name if it is available. Generally registration periods vary from one year to ten years.
When To Use a Domain Name Registrar
If you would like to check if the domain name is available and then register it using the same website, then using a domain name registrar makes the most sense. A domain name registrar can also help you setup email accounts and website hosting once the domain name is paid for. You will also be able to edit the DNS configuration if needed.
You can create a free account at the vast majority of domain name registrars and use this account to register as many domain names as you like. Most registrars allow you to use your credit card or pay pal account in order to pay for services like website hosting or buying domain names.
Costs for domain names vary from registrar to registrar and from domain extension to domain extension. some domain name extensions like .com are less expensive than others like .ai which can cost over five times as much money to buy.
Popular domain name registrars include Godaddy, Moniker, Namecheap, Cloudflare, Hover, Spaceship, and others. Two of the cheapest domain name registrars are Cloudflare and Spaceship. I’ve registered several domain names at spaceship.com and have found it to be easy to use with a wide array of useful features.
Most people are looking to buy a name domain name and host it at a hosting company. While it’s easy to do both with one company, I find it’s best to avoid vendor lock in and register the domain name and host it with two separate companies.
If the quality of your hosting company degrades you can just as easily login to the domain name registrar and set the name servers on your domain name to a new hosting company. Otherwise it takes longer and is more frustrating to have to move the domain name to a new registrar and then move the hosting company as well.
A note about vendor lock in and email addresses: It’s best to not use the email address provided for free from companies where email is not their main product. Why? An example: you’ve just signed up for internet service and that company gives you a free email address.
You pay the bill monthly, then after several years you no longer like the internet provider you have. While you look for a new internet provider you realize that your personal email account is the one provided by the internet provider. Now it just became harder to move to a new company.
Thousands of emails over multiple years and many contacts records later you realize it would take many hours to notify everyone in your contact list of your new email address and to login to every website you use and change your old email to the new email address, not to mention moving all your emails to your new email address. Free email costs the company nothing and costs you time, a valuable resource which can’t be renewed.
When To Use a Whois Lookup Service
Another way to check if a domain name is available is to use a whois lookup service. A whois lookup service is most useful if you want to see who owns the domain name or when the domain name was bought and the domain name registrar company that was used to register the name.
You can also find when the domain name expires as well as when it was last updated and which name servers it’s using. The registrant and technical contacts are also shown although many domain registrars offer a privacy service that removes this information.
A variety of whois services exist. several well known whois services include: whois.com, whois.domaintools.com, lookup.icann.org, godaddy.com/whois, and others.
The website lookup.icann.org/en/lookup also allows you to do a whois lookup on ip addresses which underlie domain names. Information such as who owns the ip address, when it was registered and last changed along with administrative and technical records are shown when doing this search.
Summary
It’s easy to choose how to check if a domain name is available to register. When you would like to know if a domain name is available to register, going through a domain name registrar like godaddy, moniker, namecheap, hover, spaceship, and others is the easiest way to find an available domain name and buy it all on the same website.
If your looking to find out who owns a domain name or when the domain was registered, last updated or expires or if your looking for the admin or technical contact information a whois search is the way to go.