I got an email from Network Solutions this morning stating that my website was up for renewal. I decided to take care of it right away so that it didn’t get shut off, which I have run into before. It’s not a very nice feeling to get a bunch of emails telling you that your website is down.
This website is a little bit different than some of the others that I run. It’s mainly there for me to post things going on in my life and share cool things I find on the internet. Not a big deal, but it does let me create funny email addresses that end in @charliedelong.com…
So back to the website renewal. I clicked the link in the email and declined all of the extras that they wanted to sell me -> Domain privacy, Hosting, etc, etc, etc. I get to the payment screen and the total is $27.99. I knew the price was going to go up because I had purchased it for 99 cents a couple of years ago and remembered only paying $10 to renew it last year. That was when I remembered this little “lifehack” to get a cheaper price… (Also, I am unsure as to where this sits between ethical and unethical, but it saved me a bunch of money…)
To get this started you simply have to go to the NetworkSolutions.com website and login to your account. Once you are logged in look for a link, about halfway down the page that says “My Domain Names” (See Figure 1). Click right on the words “My Domain Names” and you will be brought to a lost of your domains, or (if you just have 1 domain) you will be taken to the settings for your individual domain name.
Now the excitement begins. It is sort of like playing chicken with the company that has control over your domain name… This is where you scroll down and click on the link like ou are going to take your domain name and switch to another provider. Which, if you were to do this, you would also get a cheaper price on your domain name. The downside to this is that you will experience some sort of downtime waiting for the DNS records to switch over… Nobody wants downtime… In this step we will simply click on the link at the bottom that is labeled, “Turn Off or Request Authorization Code”.
This “Turn Off or Request Authorization Code” setting will give you the option to get a code that will allow you to move the domain to their competition, and they don’t want that… So at this step in this epic race of chicken (slight exaggeration) they will offer you a discount down to $10 for the renewal.
Disclaimer: This might not work for you. All I am saying is that it worked for me 2 years in a row, and if I follow through these steps right now, it still gives me the option. Hopefully it will work for you and you can save some money too!
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