Crunching the Numbers
To select the registrar that is best for you, you will need to understand what you need. Do you only want email, or do you require a more sophisticated web space? Here is an example of some of the differences between the prices and services of companies we reviewed above.

Limited Budgets: Parking vs. Email Forwarding Costs
While the basic registration fee charged by Domain People is much higher than the fees charged by Blue Genesis - US$35 compared to CDN$14.99 per year – you will pay more over a one year period if you register with Blue Genesis and sign up for their basic email account.

Blue Genesis charges an extra CDN$9.99 per month for an account that includes email forwarding, or $109.89 a year, whereas email forwarding and a business card website is included in US$35 registration fee charged by Domain People. With that being said, the basic email account offered by Blue Genesis is more sophisticated than the one offered by Domain People.

 
Adding a basic website hosting account
However, if you need email forwarding and a small webspace with limited functionality, an FTP account at Pair Networks for US$5.95 a month offers the best value. Currently their US$35 domain name registration fee is high, but this should drop significantly in the near future. If you are a confident Internet user you may wish to register a domain with a low-cost registrar such as Blue Genesis, and transfer the domain to an inexpensive hosting provider such as Pair Networks to take advantage of the value offered by the FTP account.

 
Increasing complexity
As the sophistication of your hosting needs increases, Blue Genesis has many mid-range packages that offer the best value for individual businesses of the three providers reviewed in this workshop. Many of the features offered by Pair Networks, such as the ability to host more than one domain on a single account for just US$1 per month, do not benefit smaller businesses with relatively straightforward needs.