Gone are the days when Network Solutions would charge you astronomical fees to register domains. Actually, their fees are still heavy, but they have competition now. There are hundreds of Domain Registrars on the Internet today most which charge considerably lesser than Network Solutions to register domains. But with so many registrars, how exactly do you go about selecting the one for you? When you register domains, here's what you need to pay attention to.
First and foremost, you check if provider is an accredited ICANN domain registrar. This is important because ICANN only certifies businesses with the right technology and processes. Besides that, if you register domains with an ICANN accredited registrar, and they do foul up; you always have the choice of complaining about it to ICANN. So always look for an "ICANN accredited" seal on the registrar's site before you go ahead and register domains with them.
Secondly, before you register domains, you should know what kind of domains you may need in future. Almost everyone will register domains with Top Level Domains (TLDs) like .com, .org and .net. But not all registrars will register domains with international extensions such as .in, .fr, .eu, .cc, or even specialized extensions such as the more recent .mobi. Of course, when a new TLD or ccTLD is approved by ICANN, it takes time for registrars to upgrade the applications and pay fees to handle the new extensions; so users (such as yourself) may experience a delay before being able to seamlessly register domains in new extensions. But, in any case, your registrar should be proactive in doing it. Otherwise, you will end up depending on several registrars to register domains in these other fancy TLDs. This means more control panels to look after, more usernames and passwords, and often, more headaches every time you register domains. However, there are some people who prefer to do this, but for different reasons entirely: They will register domains with the lowest cost registrar for a particular TLD at that time.