Client onboarding · Naming brief · an evening with the client
The Name They Choose Becomes the Tickets You Answer
Hyphens, homophones and clever endings all sound fine in a meeting and then arrive on your support desk as mistyped email addresses and invoices nobody received.
Straight answer first
Judge a client's candidate names on how much support work each one will generate, because that is the cost you carry and they do not. A name that has to be spelled out on the phone, or that a customer types with the wrong ending, turns into missed enquiries, bounced invoices and calls to you asking why.
The brand decision belongs to the client. The recommendation, the trademark check, the eligibility check on country endings and the registration of the near-misses are all billable work that belongs to you. Put the recommendation in writing, register the winner and the two rejects, and the naming conversation stops recurring.
Written by the Hosting Seller staff · Checked 4 August 2026
Beginner
Bench skill needed
5
Stages in the brief
Free
Cost of asking us
Tested
On the platform you resell
This is the version for people advising somebody else. You are not picking a name you have to love; you are picking one you can support for as long as the retainer lasts.
It assumes you will be the person answering the phone when a customer cannot find the site. That single assumption changes almost every recommendation you would otherwise make.
Names that generate tickets
Three patterns cause most of it. Hyphens, because nobody says them out loud and half your client's customers will drop them. Homophones and number substitutions, because they cannot survive being read down a phone line. And endings the client's own customers have never used, because a proportion will type .com anyway and land nowhere.
Each one shows up as the same ticket: a customer says the email bounced, or the site "has gone", and the client forwards it to you. Nothing is broken. You will still spend twenty minutes proving that, on every occasion, for years.
Whose decision this actually is
The client owns the brand and should own the final call. Your job is to make the trade-offs visible and to put a recommendation in writing, so that the consequences of overruling it are theirs rather than a dispute later about what you advised.
Two short paragraphs in an email do it: the name you recommend, the one thing that worries you about their preferred option, and what it will cost to work around. Clients rarely mind being disagreed with in writing. They mind being told afterwards.
Endings, markets and what you can actually register
Take .com when the client sells across borders and a country ending when every customer sits in one place — a country ending often does better in national results and tells buyers where the business trades. Where the .com has gone, bending the brand usually reads as more trustworthy than reaching for an unfamiliar ending.
Country codes are also where promises go wrong. Some ccTLDs impose eligibility or local presence conditions, and those come from the registry rather than from any registrar. Check before you tell a client the name is theirs; the alternative is unwinding it after they have printed something.
Charge for the shortlist
Naming support is real work: a brief, three candidates, a trademark and company-name search, handle availability and the registration of the near-misses. Bundled invisibly into a build it looks like free advice and gets treated accordingly.
Priced as a small line item it gets taken seriously, and the domains attached to it renew at roughly 20% margin on our platform every year afterwards. That is the difference between a favour and a service.
Where the names and the accounts live afterwards
Register and renew client names on the same account that holds their hosting, then hand out cPanel logins behind private nameservers of your own. One login for you, one bill, and your brand on every screen the client opens.
Reseller tiers start at $14.99/mo plus $0.40 for each active client account, with overselling switched on so the shortlist can turn into an account the same afternoon.
- Domain search reading straight from the registries, live
- Names, hosting and billing on one reseller account
- Roughly 20% margin on registrations, renewals and transfers
- Your brand on the panel; ours nowhere the client can see
Why Hosting Seller
On every plan, as standard
Priced as work, not advice
A naming brief with a written recommendation is billable. Free opinions get overruled and then blamed.
Support load made visible
Every candidate is scored on the tickets it will generate, because you are the one who answers them.
Registry rules checked first
Eligibility and local presence conditions on country endings come from the registry — check before you promise.
The near-misses registered too
Brand protection is another line on the invoice and another renewal at around 20% margin.
One account, one bill
Names and hosting on the same reseller account, so nothing sits in a client's forgotten registrar login.
Answers at any hour
If a registration or a transfer stalls, there are people on the counter rather than a queue until Monday.
First Steps
From choosing to live
- 1
Write the brief before anyone brainstorms
One page: who the customers are, which countries they sit in, whether the name has to survive being read aloud, and what the client will print it on. Ten minutes here removes most of the argument later.
- 2
Read the shortlist down a phone line
Say each candidate to somebody who has not seen it written and ask them to type it. If it needs spelling out, every future customer will need it spelling out too — and half of them will not bother asking.
- 3
Run the trademark and company-name search
Check registered trademarks and the names competitors already trade under before you register anything. A solicitor's letter arriving after the client has printed packaging is a conversation you do not want to be part of.
- 4
Confirm you can actually register and renew the ending
Check eligibility and local presence conditions on any country code, and confirm the renewal price rather than the first-year price. An ending the client cannot keep is worse than one they never had.
- 5
Register the winner, and the two you talked them out of
Buy the chosen name plus the obvious sibling ending and the misspelling their customers will type. It is a few pounds each, it renews at around 20% margin, and it stops a competitor buying the near-miss next year.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- Domain search reading live from the registries, not a cached list
- Names and hosting billed together on one reseller account
- Roughly 20% margin on registrations, renewals and transfers
- Private nameservers at no extra cost, so the client reads your brand
- cPanel and WHM licensing inside the plan price, whatever the account count
- Free SSL on every account you create, reissued before it lapses
- Daily backups, with restores you run yourself from the panel
- A 99.9% uptime target, watched by monitoring day and night
- A 30-day money-back guarantee on hosting plans, 7 days on reseller
- The renewal price printed on the tag matches the order price
Across the Counter
Things people ask us all the time
The client insists on a name I have advised against — what now?
Register it, and put your reservation in writing first. One short paragraph naming the specific cost — spelling it out on calls, mistyped addresses, a second domain needed for defence — turns a future complaint into a decision they already made. Then register the version you preferred as a redirect.
Is there any SEO value left in keywords in the domain?
Hardly any. The exact-match bonus was dismantled years ago. A name people recognise, click and return to does far more for the signals search engines weigh today than keywords glued together with hyphens — and it costs you far less in support.
Should I register the near-misses for every client, or only the big ones?
Anywhere the name goes on a vehicle, a sign or an invoice, take the sibling ending and the obvious misspelling. For a small project site it is over-servicing. Judge it on whether a competitor buying the near-miss would embarrass your client.
Can I sell country-code domains to clients abroad?
Often, but check the registry's conditions first. Some country codes require local presence or a registered entity in that country, and those rules are set by the registry rather than by us. Confirm eligibility before you quote, not after the client has agreed the name.
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