Where to get a domain — and what a free one really costs
Any domain works here: point one MX record and the address is yours. The only question is where the domain comes from, and that turns out to matter more than people expect.
The short answer
Register an ordinary domain at an ICANN-accredited registrar. An unremarkable name in a boring zone costs roughly what a coffee costs, once a year. That is the whole recommendation, and everything below is why the free alternatives are worse than they look.
What a free domain actually costs
Free domains are not a cheaper version of the same thing — they are a different thing with different failure modes. In rough order of how often they bite:
| What happens | Why it happens |
|---|---|
| It is taken back without notice | You paid nothing for it, so nobody owes you anything. Reclaiming it costs the provider nothing either. |
| Sign-up forms refuse it | Free zones are used heavily for throwaway accounts, so sites block-list them a whole zone at a time — everyone inside included. |
| Mail is treated as suspicious | A zone has one shared reputation. What other people did with it lands on your address too, however little you had to do with it. |
| The provider disappears | Free services close down. When that happens, every domain under them stops working at the same moment. |
“Free” comes in four shapes, and only one of them is a domain
The word covers four arrangements that behave nothing alike. Which one you are being offered decides everything that follows, and it is usually not stated:
| What is on offer | What you actually get | Where it ends |
|---|---|---|
| A whole zone given away | A real domain at no cost, in a zone that exists for exactly that purpose. | This model has run its course. The best-known such zone stopped issuing names in March 2023, and millions of the domains already in it stopped working the year after. |
A name inside somebody's domain — you.theirdomain.tld | Not a domain, only a record in their zone. Both the domain and the DNS stay with them. | Usually there is nowhere to put an MX record, so for mail this option fails before it starts. |
| A domain included with a hosting plan | An ordinary domain, usually registered in your name. What is free here is the first year, not the domain. | After that the domain renews at full price, and so does the hosting. Both figures are worth knowing before you pay, not after. |
| A programme with a condition — student, non-profit, community | A real domain under your control, genuinely free, sometimes for good. | Applications are reviewed by hand, and the rules limit what the name may be used for. Mail is sometimes ruled out outright. |
So the useful question is never “is it free”. It is two questions that have short answers: whose name is on the registration, and can I add an MX record? If the first answer is “theirs”, you are renting. If the second is “no”, nothing else about the offer matters here.
Second-level “free subdomains” are worse still
Services that give away names under a domain they own — yourname.theirdomain.tld — look similar and behave differently. You are not the owner of anything: they hold the domain, they hold the DNS, and your name exists at their discretion. If they lose the parent domain, or simply stop, every name under it goes at once.
An earlier version of this page listed such services. That list has been removed rather than updated, and deliberately: it had already gone stale once — one entry carried the note “stopped working” four years before anyone noticed. A list nobody re-checks reads as current, which is worse than no list.
What to look for when choosing
- A boring zone. The well-known cheap zones are the first ones sign-up forms distrust. A plain country or generic zone attracts no attention. Which zone, and who can take it away goes through that choice properly — including the part nobody reads before paying.
- DNS editing included. You need to add an MX record — check the registrar lets you, before paying. Nearly all do; a few upsell it.
- A renewal price, not just a first-year price. The headline number is often a first-year discount, and the renewal can be several times higher.
- Auto-renew you can actually see. Most lost domains are lost to a forgotten card, not to a decision.
Then point it here
One MX record and it works — the exact values are here, and the domain debugger will confirm it took effect.