Domain name market is a huge ocean where you can find many kinds of fish. There are domain name mantainers (or registrars) which are companies authorized by the public domain registry to create a domain, we could define them as ‘the factory’ of the domain name.

there are brokers, who buy domain names in bulk to resell them, there are companies that buy domain names to make them into auctions and finally there are simple resellers which are companies (for example Oxyzer) that have another type of core business (hosting) and ’round out’ by also reselling domain names.

It certainly could be convenient in terms of time to buy the domain name and hosting from the same company, but there are some technical and economic aspects that could make the user decide to avoid this practice and the hosting provider to avoid selling domain names if it is also not a mantainer.

There are several benefits to avoiding resellers when purchasing domain names. First, you can save money. Resellers often add a markup to the price of domain names, which can make them more expensive than buying directly from maintainers. Secondly, it can be faster. Resellers may take longer to transfer domain names than maintainers. Third, it can be safer. Resellers may not be as reliable as maintainers, or may encounter problems with ‘their’ maintainer which can put end users at risk.

As far as a company focused on hosting is concerned, the choice to resell domain names can prove to be more risky than advantageous as on the one hand the profit is minimal and on the other the responsibilities are great, not to mention that you don’t have the slightest control on the final product, which is always supplied by another company, the maintainer.

Nowadays end users can buy domains directly from the source, from maintainers, and even get quantity discounts that resellers could never afford.

But how to distinguish a maintainer from a simple reseller?

Domain name maintainers are companies that have entered into a contract with the competent authority for the registration of domain names and hold the information and data relating to a domain name, therefore on their site they will certainly have information on accreditation and registration with the competent authority.

Here are some domain name maintainers where you can buy domain names directly at a reasonable price:

Namecheap: Offers domain names starting at $0.99
Domain.com: Offers domain names starting at $7.49
Namesilo: Offers domain names starting at $0.99