Our customers often ask these questions so we’ve provided the answers on this page for quick reference. If your question isn’t answered here, please contact us.

Registration

Payment

Email

Web forwarding and web hosting

Transfers

General

Registration

What is a domain name?

A domain name is an identity on the Internet. This web site’s domain name is ukcentric.com. You’ll need a domain name if you’re thinking of setting up a web site or you want to have an email address that reflects your identity on the Internet.

For example if you want to set up a web site called www.widgets.co.uk and use an email address of info@widgets.co.uk, you’ll need to register the domain name widgets.co.uk.

Why should I register a domain name?

You need to register a domain name if you’re setting up a web site, if you want to use a distinctive email address, or if you think you might want to do either of these in the future.

Thousands of domain names are registered every single day. Use our domain name checker to see if the domain name you want is available. If it is, don’t hesitate, register it straight away because somebody else might register before you.

Getting hold of a domain name before anybody else gets it is very easy and cheap with UKcentric. Getting hold of a domain name after somebody else has registered is extremely difficult and can be hugely expensive, time-consuming and involve complex litigation.

Domain names are offered on a first-come first-served basis so if you find a domain name that’s available you may register it.

How do I register a domain name?

Simply use our domain name checker to find out if your desired name is available. If it is, proceed through our checkout to pay for the domain name, then we’ll do the rest. We’ll notify you by email as soon as the domain name has been registered.

How do I find a domain name that is available to register?

Use our easy domain name checker.

How much does it cost to register a domain name?

Click here for the current prices.

How long does it take to register a domain name?

Once we receive your order, we automatically begin the registration process. This can take up to 12 hours to complete, but is usually completed within 20 minutes. Once your domain name has been successfully registered you will receive an email confirmation, together with details of how to make changes to your name.

.com or .co.uk? What’s the difference and which should I buy?

Although there are no hard and fast rules, .com domain names normally denote global firms, whereas .co.uk usually denote UK based companies. Either way, they are both visible to anyone in the world on the Internet. If you are buying a .co.uk we strongly recommend that you buy the .com version of your name at the same time. Together they have a resale value far in excess of the separate names.

Furthermore it is our experience that if you start a web site using one name, somebody else will pick up on this, register the other name and try to sell it to you or compete with you.

.org and .org.uk names are usually used by non-profit-making organisations. .biz is a new possibility for global commercial web sites, and .net is normally as a complement to .com.

.info is used for informational web sites.

.me names are usually registered by individuals for their personal web sites.

Payment

Is my payment secure?

Yes. Your payment is taken through Worldpay (owned by Royal Bank of Scotland), the leading UK providers of secure online credit card transaction facilities.

Your credit card details are not passed to us, but instead are only held for the duration of the transaction.

What will my credit card statement show?

Your credit card statement will show a payment to UKCENTRIC LTD, our parent company.


What is WorldPay?

WorldPay is our payment processing partner. We use them to ensure your credit or debit card details are processed securely. WorldPay is a leading online card processing firm.


What is FuturePay?

When you make a payment to UKcentric through WorldPay, you set up a “FuturePay” agreement. This means that your card details are stored secured by WorldPay for use in the future.

FuturePay also enables us to take regular payments from your card, such as for monthly web hosting fees, or annual domain registration fees.

Don’t worry, we won’t be taking any money from your card, unless you place another order.

Without using FuturePay, you would need to re-enter your credit or debit details every month!

My hosting control panel

Each hosted domain comes with its own control panel which you can log into to add, change and remove services such as email accounts. We also provide many other useful tools such as the ability to install software onto your hosting account.

We send you the address of your control panel together with your username and password once your web hosting account is set up. You’ll need these details to access your control panel. If you don’t have that email any more, contact us.

Email


How do I set up an email account?


If you have a web hosting account with us, you can set up email accounts such as info@mysite.co.uk. To do this, first login to your control panel (see the section above on logging in to your hosting control panel).

  • Once logged in, go to the “Email” section of the page.
  • Click on “Mail boxes”
  • In the “Add a new mail box” textbox, enter the name of your email address (e.g., “sales” or “info” or “bob”).
  • Click “Add”
  • A password for this email account is generated automatically. You can find out what it is by hovering over it.
  • You can change this password if you like to something more memorable. To do this enter your new password in the password box and click “Modify”.

Changing email account passwords

You can change the password on your email account. To do this:

  • Log in to your control panel (see above), then:
  • Go to the “Email” section of the page
  • Click on “Mail Boxes”
  • Click through to the mailbox you want to edit
  • Enter your new password in the password box
  • Click “Modify”

Can I use webmail to send and receive email?

Webmail is an incredibly useful service which allows you to send, receive and compose emails using a web browser. To access your webmail account, go to http://webmail.mysite.co.uk (replacing mysite.co.uk with your own domain name). Log in with your email account’s email address and password.

Can I send and receive email from my iPhone, Android phone, iPad, tablet, PC or other device?

Yes! Our email service fully supports the two main email “protocols” – IMAP and POP3. This means that as long as your device supports these standard services (which most do) you’ll be able to set up your device to send and receive email.

If you are going to use your email account on multiple devices, we recommend using IMAP when setting up your account. IMAP supports synchronisation of emails and folders across devices, but POP3 does not.

Can I send and receive email using popular software such as Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail etc.?

Yes! Again, our email service fully supports the two standard email “protocols” – IMAP and POP3. As all popular email clients support these protocols you can use any of these to send and receive email through your email accounts with us.

How do I set up my software or device to send and receive email?

Here are the details you will need to set up your email software. You can send and receive email through any email software that supports the POP3 or IMAP email protocol, which includes Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, Android and iPhones.

​You can use either a POP3 connection or an IMAP (recommended) connection. By using an IMAP connection, you can synchronise email across multiple devices. For example, you can have email on your phone, your tablet and your computer, and when you delete a message from your phone, it will also be deleted on your other devices.

Your device or program should have detailed information on how to add and set up mailboxes onto the system, but there are general pieces of information you need to complete the process. Make sure you replace “mysite.co.uk” below with your own domain name.

  • When selecting the account type, select IMAP.
  • Your username is your full email address.
  • Your password is your mailbox password, which you can find in your control panel.
  • Your Incoming Mail Server and Outgoing Mail Server are both mail.mysite.co.uk

Basic settings

So, for example, if your name is Bob and your domain name is mysite.co.uk:

Incoming server settings:

  • Mailbox type: IMAP
  • Server name: mail.mysite.co.uk
  • Username: bob@mysite.co.uk
  • Password: the password you entered when you set up the email account
  • Port: 143
  • Encryption method: None

Outgoing mail server settings

  • Server name: mail.mysite.co.uk
  • Mailbox type: SMTP
  • Username: bob@mysite.co.uk
  • Password: the password you entered when you set up the email account
  • Port: 587
  • Encryption method: STARTTLS
  • Logon using Secure Password Authentication: no

Can I forward emails I receive at my domain name to my existing email address?

Yes! We now offer full email forwarding services for free with every single domain name purchased. You can designate up to five separate email forwarding addresses.

For example if you registered the domain name mysite.co.uk you could set up sales@mysite.co.uk to forward to one email address, and george@mysite.co.uk to forward to another email address. You can also set up a “catch-all” email address to forward emails that arrive at any address on your domain name so you will never miss any email sent to your domain name.

Note: email forwarding does not allow you to send emails, only receive them. To send emails through your domain name you will need web hosting.

To use email forwarding, log in and click “Domains”, then go to the domain name you wish to receive email to, and click “Email forwarding”.

Can I get an email address with my domain name?

Yes! If you add one of our low-cost web hosting and email plans to your domain name during registration, you can have up to 50 email addresses for your domain name (see plans for details). Alternatively, we provide free email receiving and forwarding facilities with all domain name registrations (see above).

Web hosting and web forwarding

Can I use my new domain name to take web users to my existing web site?

Yes! This is called web forwarding and we provide it free with every domain name purchase. To use web forwarding, log in and click “Domains”, then go to the domain name you wish to use, and click “Web forwarding”.

Why do I get an error message when I visit my domain name?

Although registrations are immediate, it can take up to 48 hours for a domain name to become “visible” to the Internet. The average length of time it takes is about 12 hours. During this time your web browser may display an error message. After this time, your domain name will show a standard page from this web site.

If you want to change what you see when you visit your name, please see web hosting, below.

How do I set up my web site once I’ve registered my name?

You can purchase low cost web hosting from us which will give you full access to set up your web site and use email once your domain is registered.

New to web hosting? Read our beginners guide to web hosting.

Once your hosting account is set up please read our guide to using FTP to upload your web site.

Can I use my new domain name to divert web users to my existing web site?

If you want to divert traffic to your existing web site which is hosted with a company other than ourselves, there are two ways to do it.

1: You can update your nameservers to those of your hosting company. They will be able to provide you with the nameserver names. To do this: log in to your UKcentric account, click “Domain names”, click the relevant domain name, then click “Nameservers”.

2: You can use our “web forwarding” facility. This is a simpler method which allows you to just divert web users to your web site URL. To do this: log in to your UKcentric account, click “Domain names”, click the relevant domain name, then click “Web forwarding”.

Transfers

How do I transfer a domain name into UKcentric?

To do this you must first have a customer account. If you do not already have one, please create an account.

The fees for transferring a domain name into UKcentric are identical to our low-cost registration fees.

How do I transfer a domain name away from UKcentric?

Unlike other companies, we do not charge for transferring domain names away. This is because we recognise that if we provide great services there will be no need for customers to move away.

However, we do stress that transfers are time-consuming, can incur charges from the receiving company, and are totally unnecessary. If you want to host your domain name with another company you can easily do this by updating your nameservers (see above). If your hosting company have told you that you must transfer the name to them to host it, this is technically not the case.

General

Who are UKcentric?

We’re a web design company in London, and we’ve been trading since 1999. We’re friendly, approachable, and in this virtual world we are very real! We welcome your comments and questions:

UKcentric Ltd
34 Surbiton Business Centre
46 Victoria Road
Surbiton
Surrey
KT6 4JL

Ring 020 8399 4920

What if I need further support or help?

We put the “gone” into “jargon”. We’re experts but very approachable so please don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re available during office hours to answer your emails and calls.

What happens when my domain name expires?

Your domain name is registered for a period of years (2 years minimum in the case of .uk names). Before this time is up we’ll contact you using the email address you’ve given us. You then have the choice to register your domain name again or leave it to expire. Re-registration will involve a charge similar to your initial registration fee.

To make sure you receive our renewal notices, please ensure your spam filters and junk mail filters are set up to be able to receive emails from ukcentric.com. If you don’t you may miss our renewal notices, and your domain name may expire.

It is a very good idea to make a note in your diary a week or two before the expiry date – our renewal notices are sent as a courtesy to help remind you when your name is going to expire, but the responsibility for renewing in time lies with you.