Need to get your head around DOMAINS and HOSTING?

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To communicate effectively using email
Using business class email allows you to converse effectively with your customers and suppliers, as well as internally with your staff. You can access your email on your PC, on the move with your mobile, or via the Web when you are in holiday. Being able to respond to customers even when out of the office will generate more business for you.

To handle enquiries 24 hours a day
You might sleep, but your website doesn’t. People search the web at all hours, and if they visit your site outside normal hours, having your business information, answers to frequently asked questions and a simple enquiry form will capitalize on this 24/7.

Because your competitors already are! 
It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. Your competitors are already using the web successfully to promote their businesses and win more customers and orders. You need to be out there competing effectively for business in every area of opportunity.

Yes - the first thing you need to do is select and register one or more domain names. A domain name is the address on the internet that you will use later for your website, and also for email and other services. For example, Amazon initially registered the domain “amazon.com”, then they were able to set up a website at www.amazon.com and they could use email addresses likes This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to contact their customers. 

For your first domain, try to pick something that clearly represents your organization's best known name, but if this is too long, you can of course shorten or abbreviate it. So if your company is Acme Widgets Ireland Ltd, you might go for acmewidgets.com, acme.ie or awi.ie depending on which is available.  You don't have to limit yourself to one domain name, especially if your business name is distinctive or very important to you. You might want to register acmewidgets.eu and acmewidgets.co.uk to use in future years when you expand.

You can check what versions of your company name are available using the search box at the top of this website!

Correct! Once you've secured your domain name you will probably want to start using it right away. So you need to set up services on your domain by purchasing a hosting account. You can do this at the same time as registerting your domain, or any time afterwards. Web hosting will give you space on computers permanently connected to the internet where you can put your website so that anybody can visit it 24 hours a day 365 days a year. 

Web hosting accounts generally come in two flavours: Windows or Linux. When starting off Linux is by far the most popular, but for most purposes there really isn't much difference. Over 80% of websites will work equally well on either type and it is only when implementing more advanced websites that it there is any difference. If you aren't sure, just pick Linux and if you do ever need to change over you can do so easily, and for free!

No problem. If you've purchased a web hosting account this will usually let you set up any number of email addresses like This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it so that you can communicate professionally with your customers, suppliers and colleagues. Email can be accessed a number of ways. You can use our webmail facility to check your email from anywhere in the world. Or you can use a normal email program on your PC like Microsoft Outlook to send and receive emails. You can even access your email using mobile devices like a Blackberry, and all these methods will work together.

If you don't want to splash out on full web-hosting immediately, you can instead go for an email-only hosting package, and upgrade later at any time for just the difference in cost. Our email accounts include free anti-virus scanning and Spam Assassin for your safety. If you prefer to run your own email system in-house, then our control panel will let you direct email for your domain(s) anywhere you like.

All our web hosting accounts include a free web site builder tool that you can use immediately set up a basic web site to share information with your customers. This is usually enough to get you up and running.  If you like, you can also design your own website on your PC using standard web design tools like Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web. This is easily transferred to your hosting account.

Later on, you may wish to employ a professional web designer to create a more professional customized site. You can simply give your web designer partial access to your web hosting account so that they can upload and configure your new website. Our hosting packages support all the main hosting and development technologies so you can keep control of your website rather than being tied in to your designer's system.

Certainly! This is one of the best reasons to set up a website. In order to sell online, generally you need to install shopping cart software on your website. This is a piece of software that allows you to list all your procucts online, specify prices, stock levels etc and that allows visitors to your website to place orders for these products. Our hosting accounts include an application vault that contains many popular shopping carts such as Magento or OSCommerce which can be installed in seconds. 

In addition, you will probably need to be able to take secure payment details on the site and to pass these to a payment service provider who will charge the credit card. All of our hosting accounts support SSL certificates (to enable that lock symbol in your browser) either out-of-the box or as a simple upgrade. 

Start now by going to our Domain Registration page and using the free domain search to find the domain name you wish to register. If its available, you'll be brought straight into our Shopping cart - simply choose the lenght of time you wish to register the domain for and add to the Cart.

Next you'll be offered a choice of hosting packages, if you want hosting  immediately, select the package that suites you best and add to the Cart also. If if doubt, choose the Starter 5 - its more than sufficient for most sites and you can always upgrade later if you need to.

On checkout you'll be asked to enter a username and password for your new account. You can use these anytime you wish to log into your Irish Domains account. You'll also be asked for your full contact details, Registration details (if different) and of course payment.

Your order details will be emailed to you automatically on completion of checkout proceedure.