Domain purchase

[JordanT91]

Our default domain is quite long. For example, my email address is [email protected].sch.uk. It's a massive pain reading out our email addresses, especially as the school name has a tricky spelling.

 

I've been eyeing up xxx.uk (school initials) and have enquired to the current owner. They want £5000 to sell the domain name to us. Do you think that is a reasonable amount for a 3 letter .uk domain name?

Edited February 12, 2021 by JordanT91

[Michael]

I'd look at a different domain extension, there are absolutely loads out there. I do agree though, the shorter the better. You can still keep your .sch.uk as an alias.

[paulkerton]

It's hard to justify the cost of £5000 for a domain name with public sector money.

I'd go for the school's name, generally at that point.

[JordanT91]

We do have a schoolname.org domain that I use for AD/O365 but I won't release them to the LA for use with our emails.

 

I agree £5000 is definitely far too much to justify, but I do think there is some value for an SEN school having a very simple domain name. I very much doubt the owner will come down in price though.

 

Thanks all.

[mavhc]

The LA are doing your emails, but you have O365 yourself?

[Foresthippy]

We do have a schoolname.org domain that I use for AD/O365 but I won't release them to the LA for use with our emails..

 

If the council manage your tenancy but you manage the domain, you could get them to add the domain to your tenancy and you could create the required DNS records. Obviously you'd need a bit of to and fro with them to do this.

[chaplic]

Putting my governor hat on for a second (I dont know your delegated spending limits) but Id be furious about this proposed expense with public purse. 100 quid, sure it makes life easier, but this is a material amount of money.

[JordanT91]

The LA are doing your emails, but you have O365 yourself?

Yep. They manage the Google domain that we use for emails, and we also have our own O365. The email side of this doesn't really get used

 

When you don't have anyone whose job is dedicated to IT, sometimes its easier to let the LA take care of some essential services like email and broadband/filtering.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Putting my governor hat on for a second (I dont know your delegated spending limits) but Id be furious about this proposed expense with public purse. 100 quid, sure it makes life easier, but this is a material amount of money.

 

Don't get me wrong, £5000 was never a viable option! I just wanted to know if that was the going rate, so I know whether to bother negotiating or not.

[mavhc]

Just pick something else, there's so many TLDs now

[Michael]

It sounds like the classic the school are the legal owner, but the LA are the technical contact and process domain record changes.

 

This is absolutely fine if you have no IT support, but the LA should still add/remove whichever domain records required. With O365 they all follow a standard pattern in my experience.

[Danp]

I'm looking at other domains too, our current .com is out of date (schoolnamehouse.com we are now schoolnameprep) there are loads of options out there for £16'odd a year, .co is an example, sure you could get one of those then make a big thing about having the school money.

[Norphy]

Just pick something else, there's so many TLDs now

 

I don’t necessarily disagree but there is one possible issue here. We bought the matching .academy and .college gTLDs for our schools and so many people just couldn’t wrap their heads around that you didn’t have to end a website address with .com, .org or one of the older TLDs. In the end we registered a load of .org.uk addresses

[Jamman960]

5k is a lot but probably what it’s worth. I managed to get hold of 2initials.school which works well - someone’s sitting on the .co.uk version of ours and hasn’t responded to my emails

 

I think people are more accepting of the newer tlds and I’m coming across fewer forms that refuse .school

[Davit2005]

5k is a lot but probably what it’s worth. I managed to get hold of 2initials.school which works well - someone’s sitting on the .co.uk version of ours and hasn’t responded to my emails

 

I think people are more accepting of the newer tlds and I’m coming across fewer forms that refuse .school

 

Indeed they could have a lot tied into that domain which would take re-work, re-branding, redoing paper work etc.

 

Or annoyingly they could of just bought to make a profit.

[Steve21]

Think it's ridiculous even considering paying that much for what isn't even a top level domain (You know what I mean before someone's pedantic), no way should you be spending that much on a domain

 

If you want a secondary shorter email address you could buy hundreds of .co.uk's that are shorter without paying that much. I bet even something similar to "3initials"school.co.uk would be available for £10~

 

Steve

[the_quick]

It is worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it, domain world is full of things like that.

 

We bough a few years ago schoolname.org and use it now for our email, as schoolname.countyname.sch.uk was bit long. I think this is the right way to go, you will still have access to old, long domain.

[JordanT91]

Think it's ridiculous even considering paying that much for what isn't even a top level domain (You know what I mean before someone's pedantic), no way should you be spending that much on a domain

 

If you want a secondary shorter email address you could buy hundreds of .co.uk's that are shorter without paying that much. I bet even something similar to "3initials"school.co.uk would be available for £10~

 

Steve

 

If you read my posts, nobody is considering paying that much. I asked for everyone's opinion as to whether the figure is a reasonable amount for a 3 letter .uk domain so that I know whether or not to bother negotiating. £5000 was never an option, and to be honest anything over a couple hundred quid probably isn't either.

[localzuk]

3 letter domains are some of the most expensive domains in the world these days. 2 Letter domains even more so. So £5000 for one? Seems entirely reasonable.

 

But as you say, that's not a suitable amount to spend for a school.

[rob_coles]

We have a ridiculously long domain name too!

We just purchased a 4 letter plus a co.uk domain name.

 

Best £5.88 I’ve spent.