Many websites are registered under the name of someone other than the business owner. While Bouncy Castle Network registers all domain names with the name and contact information of the business owner themselves, many other companies register domains in the name of the website design company’s director!
It’s very important for all businesses to ensure that their domain name is registered in their name – otherwise they have effectively surrendered their domain name to a third party. The domain name registrant can be compared to the person a car or a building is registered to – and if your home was registered in someone else’s name, you’ll struggle if you ever need to sell it on, or move house, or build an extension, or prove your ownership in any other way. Even if you’ve got acres of receipts that prove you’ve been paying for the domain, you might struggle to convince a neutral third party that you are the rightful owner.
A domain doesn’t cost that much. Trying to recover a domain that someone is withholding from you and that is not registered to you could be much more expensive – the registered owner could potentially extort as much money as possible from you. However, if the domain is registered to you, then recovering it should be cheap and easy. Even if the company that bought it does not comply with your requests to make changes to it, third-party arbitration groups will quickly ensure you can access and amend the domain.
It doesn’t really matter who buys the domain, so long as they commit to renewing it for as long as you’re a customer of theirs. Remember, reputable companies will never hold your domain name hostage!