Want to just get started? Sign up with Hostinger and get a free domain today.
When you’re ready to launch a new website, you need to start with the domain first. The domain is the address people type in to get to your website, so you can see why this first step is so important. You need to start by finding and registering a domain name, which can be a little confusing if you’ve never done it before. However, I’m here to show you that finding and registering a domain name is actually really easy – for free.
Reading: How to create a website with free domain name
Yes, you read that right. Whether you’re starting a blog, building an online portfolio, or creating a personal or business website, I’ll show you the quick and easy way to get a free domain name.
6 steps to get a free domain name
Getting a free domain is easy and only takes six simple steps.
- Go to Hostinger .com
- Select a web hosting plan
- Select your billing terms
- Create an account
- Enter payment information a
- Claim your free domain
Today I’m going to show you how easy it is to claim your free domain name with Hostinger. Why? Because Hostinger is undoubtedly one of the easiest ways for someone new to domain names to get a free one.
There are a few other ways to get a free domain name with free hosting , and I’ll cover those later. However, if you choose Hostinger, you won’t encounter the limitations that come with these other options.
Hostinger is a great option to get a free domain as it comes with the cheapest web hosting plans. These bundle deals are really valuable because you still need someone to host your future website once you’ve secured your domain name.
With a bundle you kill two birds with one stone. Plus, you keep domain registration and web hosting with a single provider.
Hostinger’s affordable plans also include WordPress, free email accounts, and other tools you need to build a great-looking website.
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The Hostinger signup process is incredibly simple. Everything is geared towards beginners, so you don’t need any technical knowledge to get started.
There’s no signup risk either, as Hostinger offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. If for any reason you are not satisfied, contact us within one month of the start date for a full refund.
Hostinger keeps it simple: click Start Now and buy one of the plans with a free domain! But I will walk you through how to get your free domain name from Hostinger below.
Step 1: Go to Hostinger.com
The first thing you need to do is visit the Hostinger website. The company regularly runs special offers, so be sure to pay attention to the offers that appear on their homepage.
You will see several different menu navigation options. Click the Hosting option and select Shared Hosting from the drop-down menu.
You will see other types of web hosting like cloud hosting, VPS hosting and Minecraft hosting. Ignore these.
Shared hosting is the cheapest way to get a free domain name and it requires the least amount of maintenance and security know-how on your part.
If your website becomes very popular or you want to add some interactive features, you may outgrow shared hosting.
If and when that happens, Hostinger makes it easy to upgrade your hosting arrangement. More resources, more control, more websites – it’s just a click of a button when you’re ready.
Step 2: Choose a web hosting plan
After choosing the Once you have selected the right type of hosting you need to choose the right plan.
Hostinger offers a few different options for shared hosting. If you want to get a free domain, don’t choose the Single Shared Hosting plan as it doesn’t come with it.
The cheapest plan is undoubtedly a bargain, but if you want a free domain, this is the wrong way to go. That leaves you with the Premium and Business Shared Hosting plans.
Here’s what each plan offers.
Premium shared hosting (free domain name included)
- Create up to 100 websites
- 100 GB SSD storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Unlimited databases
- Approximately 25,000 monthly visits
- Create up to 100 email accounts @yourdomain
- Free SSL Certificate
- WordPress One-Click Install and Developer Tools
Business Shared Hosting
- All that comes with Premium, plus:
- 200 GB SSD storage
- Approximately 100,000 monthly visits
- Lightspeed Cache for WordPress
- Daily Backups
- Free CDN
Any of these plans are solid options. I would gravitate towards the premium plan if you don’t expect to hit your resource limits in terms of disk space or monthly traffic.
I would recommend the business plan for people who regularly update their website or are using Expect a significant volume of traffic. Business plans include automatic daily backups for the last seven days and weekly backups for the last seven weeks.
The ability to recover your website is critical. Managing backups yourself is a hassle that you can avoid with business plans.
Step 3: Select your billing terms
After selecting the appropriate plan, Hostinger will prompt to select a period of time for your plan: monthly, 12 months, 24 months or 48 months.
If you want the free domain, do not select the monthly payment option . Hostinger only includes the free domain with terms of one year or more.
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The longer your commitment, the bigger the discount. They also extend this discount for as long as possible because renewal prices are never that good. This isn’t Hostinger’s thing, it’s just how each host does it.
If you sign up longer, Hostinger actually lowers the renewal rate. This is not common. As you can see in the image above, the renewal price for a single month of service is $11.99 per month, while the renewal price drops to $6.99 per month for a 48-month term.
The downside of the Signing for a longer period means you have to pay in advance. Again, this is typical for each host. But I’m willing to take the hit with Hostinger because it’s a really great deal.
Do the math: Hostinger Premium Shared Hosting saves you over $400 for four years of hosting. Pay $100 today and change the change and never worry about hosting your website until this year’s high school freshmen graduate.
If you want the savings of a free domain name, the price will only get better.
Step 4: Create an account
After choosing your plan period, you will need to share the email address with which Sign in to your new Hostinger account. Alternatively, you can sign in with your Facebook, GitHub, or Google account.
I would make this email a regular review. If there’s ever a problem with your website, this is how Hostinger will contact you.
Step 5: Enter payment information
After you’ve set up your email, choose your preferred payment method. Hostinger supports a number of popular credit cards and payment gateways.
Normally I would walk you through some of the other add-ons you might want to select as part of your plan, but because we’ve chosen a 48- month term of Premium Shared Hosting, all important features are included:
- Free domain name: You don’t have to pay for the first year
- Free CDN: Better security and performance of the website
- SSL Certificate Activation: Keeps your website safe and trustworthy
All these additional services are great. While you can configure SSL certificates and CDNs yourself, possibly without spending a dime, it’s not easy unless you know what you’re doing. Hostinger makes all of this possible with just a few clicks. Beginners don’t have to worry about expiring SSL certificates or CDN issues.
Hostinger also waives the setup fee that customers have to pay monthly.
Once you’ve confirmed how you’re going to pay enter your payment details and click the submit button at the bottom of the page:
Step 6: Claim your free domain
Once your payment has been received, you will have the opportunity to claim your free domain name.
Select this option unless you plan to purchase additional domains or connect other domains you own.
After that, Hostinger will guide you through the process of choosing an available domain name site.
Hostinger offers domains with various extensions, including:
- .com
- .online
- .site
- .webspace
- .space
- .tech
- .store
- .blog
- .net
- .org
- .info
- .co
- .biz
- .us
- .club
In most cases, a .com domain is the only one I recommend, but there are two reasons you might get an alternative domain extension: price and availability .
A .site or .tech domain is cheaper than a .com extension, but in this case you get You still get one year free.
Nevertheless, you should pay attention to the cost of your domain name. Since you only get it for free for the first year, you don’t want to end up paying more than you expected in the long run.
The average domain name is only $10-$20 a year. But if you unknowingly buy an aftermarket domain, that number could be much (much) higher.
Price aside, .com domains are better for the long-term success of your website. Although Google’s Matt Cutts has stated that TLD plays no part in Google’s ranking of more than 200 ranking factors, a .com domain is usually more memorable to your users.
There are a few reasons for this :
- .com domains are well known. This means that regardless of what search engines think, trust is added to your website.
- You don’t tie your website to a specific location. Many other types of websites don’t do this either, but if you’re somewhere between a .co.uk website and a .com website, for example, the latter would help you reach a much larger audience.
- They encourage other websites to link to yours. Link building is important if you want to create your blog, and most reputable sites will only link to other sites that look legitimate. Just as your readers might find .com credible, so will other site owners.
I recommend setting up your domain name right away for a number of reasons.
- Sure, chances are slim, but someone else might snag your favorite domain name while you’re hesitating.
- You’d be surprised how many people hesitate when choosing a domain name and never come back to it. You’ve already paid for the service, so force yourself to take this step to move your project forward.
- Don’t hesitate about your choice of name! If you’ve made it this far, I’m confident you’ve already put a lot of thought into the domain name you want, so just go ahead and register your domain.
But If If you skip this step or click out of the window for any reason, don’t worry. You can always claim your free domain later from your Hostinger dashboard.
Other ways to get a free domain name
While Hostinger is definitely one of the best ways to get a free domain, it’s not your only option. I’ll cover some of these alternative options in more detail below:
Use a Free Subdomain
Most website builders offer free subdomains. A subdomain exists within an existing domain name.
For example, let’s say you use a free website builder like Wix. You don’t have to pay for a domain. However, your site has a subdomain in this format:
yourusername.wixsite.com/yoursiteaddress
This is what it would look like if your Wix username was ” My Stunning Website 123″ and the requested domain was “myblogsite”.
This is obviously not ideal, especially for corporate websites. No credible website has such a domain. The only time I would consider this method for a free domain is if you’re just experimenting with the website builder’s free features. But it’s not a viable long-term strategy.
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Your domain name should be short and memorable. Neither is the case with a subdomain. Just another generic domain with a string of letters for your customer to remember (or rather forget). Plus, it shows people that you’re not even willing to invest the money in a real domain name.
WordPress is another popular free subdomain option. It’s not quite as complex as the Wix free subdomain.
The format for a free WordPress subdomain is:
yoursitename.wordpress.com
You can get away with this in the short term if you use WordPress to run a small blog or personal website. But eventually you’ll want to get rid of the subdomain once you’re ready to build a sense of authority online. If it sounds like you want to go down this route, check out our step-by-step guide to building a website with WordPress.
Pay for a premium site builder plan
Similar to using the option above, you’ll likely find that website builders like Wix (or Squarespace, Zyro, or most of our other recommended website builders) have options that eliminate the need to settle for the free subdomain.
But there’s a catch. You need to upgrade to a paid plan with your website builder.
This option may not be a worthwhile solution for some of you. If you pay for a premium site builder plan, you’re not only likely to wipe out the savings of a free domain — it’ll almost certainly cost you more. Also, any savings you get will disappear after a year.
However, if you’re setting up an ecommerce site or something else that needs the advanced features of a Wix or Squarespace premium plan anyway, If so, this can be a way to mitigate some of that first year spend.
Fortunately, even the basic paid plans for Wix, Squarespace, and Zyro offer this bonus.
Research the rates at which these domains are renewed very carefully. You don’t want to settle for a bad deal that will wipe out the first year’s savings for free and end up being more expensive than just paying for a domain to begin with.
For a business email Pay for service
Just like paying for a site builder plan and getting a free domain, you can pay for a business email service and get a free domain. Places like GoDaddy allow you to pay for a business email account while getting a free domain for the first year.
Note the disadvantages we mentioned in the last section. Some of these services require you to pay any ICANN registration fees for your domain. Also, in the second year and beyond, you must start paying for the domain in full, and some of those renewal rates can be quite high.
Before attempting to get a free domain name, do your homework by using subscribe to a business email service. You may find that it’s better to just pay for a web hosting service like Hostinger to get your free domain name.
Domain registrar promotion programs (not recommended)
Many domain registrars offer free domains in exchange for showing ads on your site.
I do not recommend this.
There is nothing wrong with ads on your site. However, if you do this through a domain registrar, you have no control over the ads and their placement. Not only will this spoil the experience for your website visitors, but it will also hurt your SEO ranking.
And when your website gets thousands or even millions of views, you won’t see a penny from those ads. All you get is a free domain.
If you want to place ads on your website, do so through a legitimate advertising network like Google. Do not exchange ads for a free domain.
Free ccTLD services (not recommended)
There are countless TLD (top-level domain) services on the internet, one of which each a series of different country codes. This refers to the extension after your domain name.
So instead of getting a .com domain, you can register your domain with an alternative country code like:
- .tk — Tokelau
- .ml — Mali
- .ga — Gabon
- .cf — Central African Republic
- .gq — Equatorial Guinea
You can get these from services like Freenom or Dok.tk.
Also, something I don’t recommend.
Some country codes can’t Your website appears sketchy, which doesn’t help you build trust with your website visitors. If you look up reviews of these ccTLD services, you will find nothing but criticism. From malicious ads to adult content and random domain removals, you will not have a pleasant experience if you choose free ccTLD services.
Another major disadvantage is that you do not become the owner of the domain name when you subscribe to one of these services. This means you cannot transfer the domain name to someone else and you could lose the domain name at some point in the future if the service changes its mind.
If you are trying to run a legitimate business or blog, using one of these services is not the way to go. It may be free, but it will almost certainly ruin your site’s reputation.
Conclusion
Hostinger is the best way to get a free domain name. Just sign up for a web hosting plan and get a free domain for a year.
There are other ways to avoid paying for a domain: use a free subdomain, join an affiliate program, or use a patchy ccTLD service. But I personally wouldn’t recommend the majority of the alternative options.
If you’re thinking of getting a free domain with a random country code from an island in the South Pacific, don’t. Saving a few bucks isn’t worth the cost of running a spam website.
Stick with Hostinger or check out the best domain registrars for paid alternatives. They add a professional touch to your website and brand. The first impression is everything. You don’t want yours to be ruined by a bad domain name.
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