Buy your domain cheaply (and pick .ca vs .com)

Buying a domain takes ten minutes. This guide exists because two of those minutes — the checkout screen and the settings right after — are where people get taken.

First: choosing the name

• Shorter beats cleverer. You’ll say this name over the phone.
• Match your real business name as closely as possible; add your trade or city if it’s taken (smithelectricottawa.ca).
• Avoid hyphens and numbers — they’re miscommunicated constantly (“that’s smith DASH electric…”).
• If your exact name is taken everywhere, changing the business’s domain is fine; changing to a worse memorable name isn’t. smithelectric.ca beats thesmithelectricco.com.

.ca or .com? (the Canadian question)

Serving Canadian customers → .ca. CIRA’s research shows Canadians measurably prefer clicking .ca sites; it signals local without saying a word, and registration money goes to a Canadian non-profit. Requirement: you must have a Canadian presence (citizen, permanent resident, or a business registered in Canada) — as a Canadian business owner you qualify.

Selling internationally, or “Canadian” isn’t part of your pitch → .com. It’s the global default and nobody has to think about it.

Torn? Check the current verified total for both in the domain comparison, make one primary, and redirect the other to it. That can be useful insurance against a copycat grabbing your twin.

Want a Canadian registrar that bills only in CAD? CanSpace is CIRA-certified and remains a sound option. Review the verified renewal and checkout-tax notes; Canadian sales tax and a US registrar’s checkout treatment can change the all-in ranking.

Privacy works differently on .ca. CIRA automatically hides WHOIS contact details when the registrant qualifies as an individual, such as a Canadian citizen or permanent resident. A corporation or other non-individual registrant is public by default and may need to ask its registrar whether paid privacy is available. Choose the truthful eligibility category, then check your result in CIRA’s WHOIS lookup.

(US readers: this whole section is just “.com, done.”)

Pick the registrar for the trade-off you care about

The verified domain comparison keeps Spaceship as the lowest-cost default because it publishes native Canadian billing, has fair renewals, includes WHOIS privacy, and is run by the Namecheap group.

Porkbun is the support-first alternative. It costs a little more for .com, bills Canadians in US dollars, and is repeatedly preferred by domain owners for a straightforward interface, responsive support, and easy transfers. That is a rational trade for an owner who would rather pay a small difference than troubleshoot alone.

Cloudflare Registrar is inexpensive and secure, but it requires Cloudflare nameservers and its free-tier support is limited. That makes it a better fit for someone already comfortable with Cloudflare than for a first-time owner.

Buying it at Spaceship

1. Go to Spaceship, search your name, add to cart.
2. The registration length dropdown: 1 year is fine. Multi-year is fine too at Spaceship since renewal ≈ registration price — unlike GoDaddy-style promos where multi-year is how they lock in the markup.
3. At checkout, decline:
   • Hosting trial — you’re using Cloudflare Pages for $0.
   • Email trial — decide about email deliberately, with a comparison, not at a checkout screen.
   • Anything about SSL certificates — HTTPS comes free with your hosting.
4. For .com, WHOIS privacy is included free, so there is nothing to buy. Without it, registration contact details can be exposed in public data, which is one source used for fake “domain expiry” letters and sales outreach. Free privacy at Spaceship and Porkbun reduces that exposure, but it cannot stop calls based on public business listings. For .ca, use the CIRA rule above.

If you choose Porkbun instead, the same rules apply: buy one year, decline unrelated add-ons, enable privacy and auto-renew, then follow Porkbun’s current DNS screen rather than expecting the labels above to match.

The two settings to change right now

While you’re logged in, before you forget:

1. Turn on auto-renew. The #1 way small businesses lose their domain is a missed renewal email in a spam folder. Auto-renew plus a working payment card removes the most common failure. Keep one calendar reminder a month before the renewal date to check that auto-renew is still on and the card hasn’t expired, then glance at the account a few days after the date to confirm the renewal went through.
2. Check the account email is one you’ll still read in five years — not an old work address or your web designer’s.

That’s it. Your address on the internet, with the current native-market renewal shown in the domain table. Next: put a website on it.