Claire’s Random Thoughts

First off, I would like to warn you that nothing is completely free. These domains that I’m about to list will be free in the sense that you are not directly paying any money to the registrar, but there is always a catch that makes most of these not quite as good as paid domains. Most of these are typically designed for newbies who are not yet willing to spend much on hosting and domain names yet.

www.namepros.com
This is my favorite and probably one the only ones I would recommend to more experienced webmasters. It takes some time and effort to get a free domain with them, but once you get it, you can do whatever you want with it, including DNS control and the option to transfer the domain away from them if you wish to do so. All you have to do is click on the links that they provide you with to earn points which can later be redeemed for free domains. Clicks are worth at least .5 of a point (many are worth more), and you need 425 for a domain registration.

www.hostbidder.com and www.betlik.com
These are forums where you can earn points that you can later exchange for domain registrations or cash. You get full control over your domain that you obtain from these sites. On hostbidder, you can earn up to 10 points per post and can receive a domain for 1200 forum points (425 for .info). Unfortunately, there is a 3 posts per day limit. On betlik, you usually receive 1.5 points for each post. There is no set limit for how many you can post, but realistically, you can only make about 20 posts per day if you don’t want to risk being accused of spam. Domain registrations cost 500 points.

www.uni.cc
This is technically a subdomain, but it’s short enough to kind of look like a domain. If you sign up with uni.cc, then you get a free optional redirect, free site builder, and the option to set your own DNS servers. They’re not a bad service, but keep in mind that you are technically using a short subdomain that just kind of looks like a top level domain if you use this service.

www.freedomain.co.nr
You can get a free domain without ads instantly here. Sounds good? Well, there is a catch. Here’s why they’re not recommended for better sites. All this company does is put your site that’s actually hosted elsewhere in a frame, so if somebody goes to your .co.nr site, they are technically viewing your page in a frame. If he/she clicks on a link, let’s say directory.html, then he/she will not be directed to yourdomain.co.nr/directory.html but rather still have the same url in the address bar. This type of domain may not be good for SEO (search engine optimization), because if you wish to optimize your .co.nr domain, then all your subpages will be ignored by search engines. If you instead optimize the original url to avoid this problem, the url that will show up in search engines would be your old one instead of the .co.nr one.

www.dot.tk
dot.tk is very similar to co.nr but may not be as good. I don’t really recommend them, because they not only put your site in frames like co.nr does, but also put a bar on top of your page saying your domain is from them as well as an interstitial ad before visitors see your site.