[BaldyBeardyBloke]

Hello all,

We want to purchase a .co.nz domain name and get multiple email addresses and, possibly, we hosting too.

Can anyone recommend a provider and advise of costs?

A quick search shows discountdomains.co.nz and register.com as potential suppliers. Looks like around $30/year for the name and $100 for multiple mailboxes with decent size attachment limits.

Anyone any experience (good or bad) of either of the above or recommend an alternative?

We want to set this up before we leave UK so we can give out our .co.nz addresses to people before we go.

[Mr TW]

Hosting is best done off shore for speed and cost. NZ hosting is expensive.

My sites are hosted with 1and1.co.uk but the registrations are with http://www.newzealandreg.com/

To be honest the .co.nz domains are not worth the money. I would get a .com or .net as these work out incredibly cheap when converting from gbp.

I get 7 years for £26 by registering with newzealand reg - that price would cover me for 2 years with a gb reg company.

[BaldyBeardyBloke]

OK, cheers, that sounds like sensible advice. I'll check it out.

[MarkS]

I've got a .org.nz address. I bought it through www.5star.net.nz, who were pretty much the cheapest I found.

Rather than pay for mailboxes, why not just use Google Hosted? It requires a little bit of faffing around with DNS settings to get it up and running, but if you're not afraid of that, it's a great option. It's free, you can have up to 30 different email accounts, plus multiple addresses (nicknames) for each one (so e.g. jon@whatever.co.nz and jonathon@whatever.co.nz end up in the same mailbox) and a 2 gig storage limit for each mailbox. You also get your own Google calendars run in your domain, webspace and Google Page Creator, plus Google Apps, and you can put your own picture in the top of the all pages in place of the Google/Gmail icon. I've been using it for about 6 months now and am very impressed! Take a look at http://www.google.com/a/org/

[Mr TW]

I've used google hosted, it is good option as Mark says. Not sure about 5star prices though $35 when the others only charge $15 for a .com or .net

although $35 for .nz is comparable to $34 offered

[MarkS]

Yes, I meant that 5star were the cheapest I could find (at the time) for a .nz address - they're clearly completely uncompetitive for a .com!

I wouldn't particularly recommend 5star, they've been ok, but not great. To change any account or domain settings you have to email them - they sort it pretty quickly, but it's the kind of thing that shouldn't require user interaction. But now I've got my DNS configured using www.zoneedit.com and hosting with Google as described above, and can do everything I need to do with them, no need to trouble 5star.

[BaldyBeardyBloke]

Well that's it, after much family debate we are now the proud owners of

www.purplesprouting.com

Cheers one and all. Used NewZealandReg - simple and friendly enough. Just need to get my finger out and sort a proper web presence.