Every website is hosted on a unique public IP address. When you browse to a website, your browser requests the content to be loaded from this IP address.

This is fine for computers, however not very practical for humans. Imagine having to remember the IP addresses of all of the websites your regularly visit..? To help us out, domain names were introduced. They link the address we put in a browser to the unique IP address that hosts the website so that, when we navigate to a certain web address, the browser first queries a global network called the "domain name system", or "DNS" for short, which returns the IP address that hosts the actual site you want to visit. So the DNS is a sort of addressbook linking names of websites to locations of servers.

This explanation hopefully also highlights why picking a domain name is important. The whole reason they were introduced was to make it easier for people to remember the websites they want to visit. Therefore, your domain name should help your visitors on this regard. Try to find a domain name that is as short and simple as possible while describing what your website is about so that your visitors can easily remember and return to your site more often. To the extend possible, we suggest avoiding the use of numbers or hyphens as these will add complexity.

The domain extension is the ending of a domain. It is the ".com" in www.satonda.com.

Technically, the domain extension is called the "top level domain", or "TLD" for short. As you may have noticed, there are many different options for TLDs. At Satonda, we offer access to over 500 of different TLDs.

TLDs are divided up in 2 groups: "country-code TLDs" (ccTLD) that specify a specific country such as .nl, or otherwise "generic TLDs" (gTLD), such as .com. Over the last years, there has been a significant increase in new gTLDs as it has become easier for organizations to create their own gTLD. This trend has given website owners much more flexibility to be creative in finding their perfect domain. For example, if you own a bar, you could register a .bar or .pub domain. If your bar happens to be located in the city of Amsterdam, you could register a .amsterdam domain.

The "domain name system", or "DNS" for short, is a globally decentralized system that links unique domain names to IP addresses of the servers that host the website the user is visiting. It is therefore important that your domain name is correctly included in this system so that your visitors can in fact reach your site.

When you register your domain name with us, you get access to our DNS tool. In this tool, you can easily update the IP address your domain should point to. We will then ensure that that update gets reflected in the global DNS within minutes.

We have a tool for that! Go to our domain name availability checker to check the availability of the domain name you were thinking about.

We are here to help you with that. First, find the domain name you want. You can use our domain name suggestion tool for this if you'd like. Then, you can simply click "Buy domain", follow the registration steps and we take care of the rest!

Domains are paid annually and pricing depends on the specific top level domain that you selected. The more common TLDs, such as .com or .nl, are generally cheaper while the specific TLDs such as .restaurant are more expensive. Please go to our domain overview page to see the pricing for each domain.

Domains are registered with specific organizations that have the exclusive right to sell domain names of a particular TLD. They require upfront payment for domain names on an annual basis, therefore it is not possible to pay by month. Also, once registered, it is not possible to cancel the order to get a refund.