Registrar pricing is a first-year discount followed by a renewal you did not read. A comparison for .co.uk and .com, plus the IPS tag mechanics of moving.
A domain is the one part of your web presence that is genuinely irreplaceable. Hosting can be swapped in an afternoon; a lost domain takes your email, your search rankings, your printed stationery and every link anyone has ever made to you. It is therefore odd how casually most people buy one — usually as a tickbox during a hosting checkout.
Rule one: keep the domain away from the host
Convenience says buy them together. Everything else says do not. If a billing dispute, an account suspension or a company failure occurs, you do not want the asset that is your business identity held by the party you are arguing with. Registrars have been known to make transfers-out slow and awkward precisely when you most want to leave.
Separating them also makes moving host trivial: change an A record, done. No transfer, no 60-day lock, no auth codes.
What things actually cost
| Registrar | .co.uk renewal | .com renewal | WHOIS privacy | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Registrar | Not offered | ~£9 (at cost) | Free | Sells at wholesale, no markup ever. No .uk support. |
| Namecheap | ~£9 | ~£13 | Free for life | Honest renewals, no upsell pressure, USD billing |
| LCN.com | ~£8 | ~£12 | Free (UK opt-out) | UK company, competitive on .uk |
| Names.co.uk | ~£12 | ~£15 | Included | Long-established, upsell-heavy checkout |
| IONOS | ~£10 | ~£15 | Included | £1 first year offers; renewal is the real price |
| GoDaddy | ~£12 | ~£18 | Paid add-on historically | Everything is an upsell; renewal well above market |
Indicative and ex-VAT. The discipline is the same as with hosting: ignore the first-year price entirely and compare renewals. A £0.99 first year at £18 renewal costs more over five years than a flat £10.
Cloudflare Registrar is the outlier
Cloudflare sells domains at the wholesale registry cost with no margin at all — it makes its money elsewhere and treats the registrar as a loss-leader for the rest of the platform. For .com, .net, .org and most gTLDs it is simply the cheapest place there is, permanently, with free WHOIS privacy and no upsells.
Two catches: you must use Cloudflare's nameservers, and it does not support .uk at all. So for a British business wanting a .co.uk, the practical answer is Namecheap or a UK registrar like LCN.
.uk mechanics you should know
- Nominet is the registry. You always buy through a registrar; you never buy from Nominet directly.
- Transfers use an IPS tag, not an auth code. You ask your current registrar to change the tag to the new registrar's, then claim the domain there. Usually free and often same-day — considerably nicer than the gTLD transfer process.
- Because the tag change is initiated by the losing registrar, a disorganised or obstructive one can stall you. That is another argument for using a registrar you have no other relationship with.
.ltd.ukand.plc.ukrequire matching Companies House registration..org.ukhas no restriction despite the implication.
The registrant field is the thing to check
This is the most common and most painful ownership problem in UK small business web work: the domain is registered in the web designer's name, or the designer's company, rather than the client's. Years later the relationship ends and the client discovers they do not own their own domain.
Look up your domain now. If the registrant is not you or your company, fix it before it matters — Nominet has a process, and it is much easier while everyone is still on speaking terms.
Housekeeping worth ten minutes
- Turn on auto-renew, and make sure the card on file is not one that expires next year. Expired domains get snapped up by squatters within hours.
- Set a registry lock or transfer lock if the registrar offers one.
- Use an email address not on the domain itself for the registrar account. If the domain lapses, an @yourdomain contact address stops working exactly when you need the warning emails.
- Register a 5- or 10-year term for anything you consider permanent. It costs the same per year and removes an annual failure mode.
Published 8 August 2026. Prices and ownership change — check the comparison table for current figures, and the provider's own site before buying. No affiliate links anywhere on this site.