My domain provider has a terrible Trustpilot score and many people have said they’ve had their domains randomly deleted, or been told to pay for them. It’s a free domain though, so I wanted to take my chances as I really liked the shortness and alliteration of the domain and suffix and it was just a casual side-hobby blog that I wasn’t planning on turning into anything professional.
However if the time comes when they suddenly tell me to pay, or delete my domain, I’d really like to know the URL on here that I can use to access my website. I currently have two of these domain names as addon domains. I have a feeling because they aren’t parked, the content will not be retrievable once they delete the domain 
is that right? can someone help?
If you’re using your domain by pointing to InfinityFree’s nameservers, I think you would still be able to access your website’s files via the normal File Manager / FTP, even if your domain registrar removes your domain name.
Nevertheless, it’s still a good habit to backup your website files once every while. For example, if you accidentally deleted something by mistake (I know it’s stupid, but it happens sometimes)
Now onto the topic of your domain registrar. I was also considering using a free domain registrar, but I decided that a professional and knowingly secure domain for ~$30/year, is much better in the long run.
What your free domain registrar can do, is wait for you to build up traffic to the domain, and then ransom you for money or take it away from you and put ADs on the domain instead.
Why use a paid domain?
Aside from knowing your domain WILL be yours (if using a reputable domain registrar), you can get many benefits from having a proper domain name.
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You fully own the domain, you can have your own subdomains (e.g. 774.kamildev.net)
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Free CloudFlare and SSL – I have enabled free CloudFlare and their SSL on my website, which makes your website look much more reputable and can even sometimes help speed up your website by utilising their CDN and caching.
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Honestly, just way more professional looking, that alone is worth the money. Many shady and spammy domains use free subdomains.
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And more - You have full control over your domain, you can do whatever you like!
I personally recommend NameSilo, I’ve registered my kamildev.net domain with them, and everything has been great. They have a 4.5 TrustPilot rating too.
If you need any help, let me know.
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Thank you for that extremely detailed answer. It’s good to know that my content will remain in the file manager - that’s a relief. Following your advice, I chose to get a new domain from a more reputable provider and I now have full ownership of the domain. I just don’t know how to to connect the domain to those folders in the file manager so that my new domain directs to them. I have subdomains too and I’d like to use the new domain with those. E.g. samename.olddomain.com to now samename.newdomain.com, and rename the associated folders in file manager (which I don’t want to do manually right now, in case I mess anything up). Any advice on how to do this? Thanks so much!
The DNS service is independent from the Hosting service. If you lose one, dont take the second.
What is your registrar server ?
You have to change in the DNS server section, the names of the DNS names server to the Infinity free names: ns1.epizy.com and n2.epizy.com
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Normally, you use your domain registrar’s website to change your domain nameservers to point to InfinityFree.
Follow this guide on how to change your domain nameservers to InfinityFree.
As for changing your existing free domain to new paid domain, I’m not too sure - try look around in the settings, but I definitely wouldn’t try renaming existing folders.
Perhaps @Admin can give you a clearer answer.
- Could be an option you can change somewhere.
- Worst case, download your website’s files and deactivate your free domain. Then you can make a new one for your new domain and upload the files.
For creating a subdomain, it’s very easy. Click on the Control Panel button, and click on the Subdomains option in the control panel.
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Renaming the folder might work, assuming your software doesn’t use hard coded paths anywhere. You could download a backup and then try it.
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thanks everyone for your help! I changed my nameservers on the domain registrar’s site. I decided to take the easy route (to me, as my domains didn’t have a lot of posts on them anyway) and rebuild them under the new urls, then delete the old sites when all content’s the same at the new sites. I went over CPU load when I was testing all the sites and redownloading plugins, but I searched the forum and saw it was suggested to download WP Super Cache and Heartbeat Control, so those plugins are on the new sites. Hopefully that will lessen the load on the CPU!
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