Introduction

Your domain name is your business’s address on the internet. It appears on your website, your email, your business cards, your packaging, your invoices and your advertisements. Customers type it, search for it and trust it. Your business email, sent from that domain, carries quotations, invoices, orders and contracts every day.

Yet many businesses discover, often at the worst moment, that they do not control their own domain. A former web developer registered it in their own name. A renewal reminder went to an old email address and the domain expired. Email from the company lands in customers’ spam folders because nobody set up the right records. Each of these problems is avoidable.

This article explains how to choose and register a domain, including .lk domains for Sri Lanka, how to make sure your business owns it, how the Domain Name System (DNS) works, and how to set up business email that is professional, secure and reliable. It also explains how Dsigngo Group and Raiden (Pvt) Ltd manage domains and email for businesses in Sri Lanka and the UAE.

What a domain name is

A domain name is a human-friendly address, such as yourcompany.lk, that points to the computers that run your website and email. Computers on the internet find each other by numeric IP addresses. The Domain Name System translates domain names into those addresses, much like a phone book.

A domain has parts:

• The top-level domain (TLD) is the ending, such as .com, .lk, .net or .ae.
• The second-level domain is the name you choose, such as yourcompany.
• Subdomains come before the name, such as shop.yourcompany.lk or mail.yourcompany.lk, and you create them yourself once you own the domain.

You do not buy a domain outright. You register it for a period, usually one to ten years, and renew it before it expires. As long as you renew, the name remains yours to use.

Choosing the right domain

A good business domain is:

• Short and easy to spell. Customers should be able to hear it once and type it correctly.
• Close to your brand name. Ideally your company or main brand name, without awkward additions.
• Free of hyphens and numbers where possible, because they are easy to forget or mistype.
• Clear of other companies’ trademarks, to avoid legal disputes.

.lk, .com.lk or .com?

For a business serving customers in Sri Lanka, a .lk domain signals a local company and can help with local recognition. Sri Lanka’s country domain is available in several forms, including .lk itself and second-level endings such as .com.lk and .org.lk for particular types of organisation. Sri Lanka also has domains in Sinhala (.ලංකා) and Tamil (.இலங்கை) scripts.

A .com domain is recognised everywhere and suits businesses that sell internationally, including to the UAE and the Gulf. Many businesses register both, use one as the main address and redirect the other to it. Registering common variations and misspellings can also protect your brand from imitators.

Registering a .lk domain

.lk domains are administered by the LK Domain Registry and registered through it and its accredited partners. Depending on the domain type, the registry may ask for supporting details, such as a business registration certificate for a company domain, and the process can take longer than for a .com. Requirements change from time to time, so we confirm the current requirements and handle the application for you.

Make sure your business owns its domain

The most important rule of domain management is simple: the domain must be registered in your business’s name.

Check these details for every domain your business uses:

• Registrant (owner): your company’s legal name, not a developer, agency or employee.
• Contact email: a company address that will still be read if a staff member leaves, such as it@ or admin@ at your domain, or a director’s address.
• Registrar account access: your business should have login details, or a written agreement that your provider manages the account on your behalf and will hand it over on request.
• Renewal date and auto-renewal: know when each domain expires and make sure it renews automatically or that reminders reach someone responsible.

When we register a domain for a client, we register it in the client’s name, and we provide the details needed to move it to another provider if the client ever chooses to.

What happens if a domain expires?

When a domain expires, the website and email usually stop working. Most registries offer a grace period during which the owner can still renew, sometimes with an extra fee. After that, the domain can be released and registered by anyone, including people who buy expired domains to resell them. Losing a well-known business domain can be very expensive to fix.

Protecting your domain from hijacking

Attackers sometimes try to take control of valuable domains by breaking into the registrar account or tricking a registrar. Protect your domains by:

• Using a strong, unique password and two-factor authentication on the registrar account.
• Turning on the registrar lock (transfer lock) so the domain cannot be moved without your approval.
• Keeping contact details up to date.
• Being cautious of emails claiming your domain is about to expire; renew only through your known registrar or provider.

How DNS works

DNS records are the instructions that tell the internet where to send visitors and email for your domain. You do not need to manage them yourself, but it helps to know the main types:

Each record has a time to live (TTL), which tells other servers how long to remember it. When moving a website or email, we lower the TTL in advance so that the change takes effect quickly. Changes to name servers can take longer to reach everyone, sometimes up to a day or two.

A mistake in DNS can take a website or email offline, so changes should be made carefully, by someone who understands them, and recorded.

Why business email should use your own domain

An address such as [email protected] looks professional, builds trust and keeps your brand in front of customers in every message. Free email addresses look less credible on quotations and invoices, and they belong to the individual, not the company. When a staff member leaves, their free email account and its customer history leave with them.

Business email on your own domain gives you:

• Professional credibility on every email.
• Control. You create, suspend and transfer accounts when staff join or leave.
• Continuity. Customer conversations stay with the business.
• Flexibility. Addresses for roles (sales@, accounts@, support@), aliases and shared mailboxes.
• Security and compliance. Central control over passwords, two-factor authentication and data retention.

Choosing an email service

There are two main ways to run business email:

1. Email included with web hosting. Mailboxes run on the hosting server. This is economical and suits small teams with moderate email use.
2. A dedicated business email and productivity service. Services such as Microsoft 365 include large mailboxes, calendars, shared files, video calls and advanced security. Raiden (Pvt) Ltd is an authorised Microsoft reseller and can supply and set up Microsoft 365 licences.

The right choice depends on the number of users, mailbox sizes, how much the team relies on shared calendars and files, and security needs. Some businesses use both: hosting email for a few general addresses and a dedicated service for staff. We recommend the right mix for your team.

Getting email into the inbox: SPF, DKIM and DMARC

The biggest email problem for many businesses is not sending, but landing in spam. Email providers decide whether to trust a message partly by checking three records in your domain’s DNS:

• SPF (Sender Policy Framework) lists the servers allowed to send email for your domain, such as your mail service, your website and your newsletter tool.
• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) adds a digital signature to each message, proving it came from your domain and was not changed on the way.
• DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) tells receiving servers what to do with messages that fail SPF and DKIM checks, and sends you reports about who is sending email using your domain.

These records are now expected, not optional. Since February 2024, Google and Yahoo have required senders to authenticate their email, and bulk senders to Gmail (about 5,000 or more messages a day) must have SPF, DKIM and DMARC in place, along with easy unsubscribe and low spam complaint rates. Even for small senders, missing records make it more likely that quotations and invoices land in spam.

DMARC also protects your brand. Without it, criminals can send emails that appear to come from your domain, for example fake invoices to your customers. A DMARC policy that rejects unauthenticated messages makes this much harder.

Keeping email secure

Email is the most common route for phishing, fraud and malware. Protect your business email by:

• Turning on two-factor authentication for every mailbox that supports it.
• Using strong, unique passwords and never sharing mailbox passwords between staff.
• Filtering spam and malware before it reaches users.
• Training staff to recognise phishing, especially fake payment requests and messages asking to change bank details.
• Confirming payment changes by phone using a known number, not the number in the email.
• Removing access promptly when staff leave, and keeping their mailbox for the business.

Moving email without losing messages

When a business changes email provider, the move must be planned so that no messages are lost and staff can keep working. A typical migration:

1. List all mailboxes, aliases and forwarding rules.
2. Create the mailboxes on the new service.
3. Copy existing emails, contacts and calendars across.
4. Lower DNS TTLs, then change the MX records at a quiet time.
5. Copy any messages that arrived during the switch.
6. Set up email apps on staff computers and phones.
7. Check SPF, DKIM and DMARC for the new service.

Building a domain portfolio for your brand

As a business grows, it often uses more than one domain: a main company domain, domains for individual brands or products, campaign domains and protective registrations of common misspellings. Without a plan, these end up registered by different people, with different providers and different renewal dates.

A simple domain portfolio policy helps:

• Keep a register of every domain the business owns, with its registrar, renewal date, purpose and where it points.
• Use one provider for as many domains as practical, so renewals and DNS are managed in one place.
• Align renewal dates where possible, and renew important domains for several years at a time.
• Redirect secondary domains to the main website, rather than letting them show parked pages or duplicate content.
• Review the list once a year and let go of domains that no longer serve a purpose.

Common domain and email mistakes

• Letting a developer or staff member register the domain in their own name. Recovering it later can take months.
• Using a personal email address as the domain contact. Renewal notices are missed when that person leaves.
• Changing name servers without copying the email records. The website moves successfully but email stops.
• instead of combining senders into one. Two SPF records cause both to fail.
• Sending newsletters from the main mailbox without an authenticated email marketing service, which harms the domain’s reputation.
• Ignoring DMARC reports, which often reveal forgotten systems sending email for the domain, or criminals spoofing it.
• Sharing one mailbox password among several staff members instead of using shared mailboxes with individual logins.

Illustrative example

The following example is illustrative and does not describe a real client.

A Sri Lankan tour operator used a .com domain registered years ago by a freelance developer, with staff using a mix of free email addresses and a few domain mailboxes. Quotations to overseas travel agents often landed in spam, and a customer once received a fake invoice that appeared to come from the company.

The first step was to recover the domain. The developer agreed to transfer it, and it was registered in the company’s name with a transfer lock and two-factor authentication. The company also registered the matching .lk domain to protect its name in Sri Lanka. Every staff member received a mailbox on the company domain, with shared addresses for bookings and accounts. SPF and DKIM were set up for the mail service and the booking system, and a DMARC policy was introduced in stages, starting with monitoring and moving to rejection once all legitimate senders were confirmed.

Quotations began reaching inboxes, and spoofed emails using the company’s domain were blocked.

How Dsigngo Group and Raiden manage domains and email

We register and manage .lk and international domains, always in the client’s name, and we set up and support business email for teams of every size. Because Raiden (Pvt) Ltd also provides office IT support and is an authorised Microsoft reseller, we can manage the domain, the website, the email service and the staff computers together.

Our domain and email services include:

• Domain search, advice and registration for .lk, .com and other endings.
• Domain transfers to us, with ownership checks.
• DNS management, with careful, recorded changes.
• Business email on your domain, through hosting email or Microsoft 365.
• SPF, DKIM and DMARC setup and monitoring.
• Spam and malware filtering.
• Email migration from other providers.
• Renewal management and reminders.

Our domain prices (per year) follow the LK Domain Registry’s published fees for .lk domains:

The registry offers multi-year discounts on .lk domains: 5% for two years, 20% for five years and 40% for ten years.

Email accounts are included in every hosting plan: 10 to 100 accounts on business hosting and 10 to 50 on WordPress hosting, depending on the plan. Each mailbox can use up to 5 GB within the plan’s storage. For larger teams, we supply Microsoft 365 licences at Microsoft’s current per-user price, with setup and migration included.

Frequently asked questions

Can I register a .lk domain if my business is outside Sri Lanka?

Eligibility depends on the domain type and the registry’s current rules. Some .lk domains have requirements for supporting documents or a local contact. We check the current rules and advise you before you apply.

Will my email stop working if I move my website?

It should not, if the move is planned. Website and email are controlled by different DNS records. We check the email records before any website move so that email keeps flowing.

Who should be listed as the domain owner?

Your business, using its legal name and a company contact email. Your provider can manage the domain, but the business should be the registered owner.

Do I need DMARC if I only send a few emails?

Yes. SPF, DKIM and DMARC help your emails reach the inbox and stop criminals from sending fake emails that appear to come from your domain, whatever your sending volume.

Can you set up Microsoft 365 for our team?

Yes. Raiden (Pvt) Ltd is an authorised Microsoft reseller. We supply licences, connect your domain, move existing email and set up staff devices.

Conclusion

A domain name and business email are among a company’s most valuable digital assets. Register the domain in your business’s name, protect the registrar account, renew on time and keep DNS records accurate. Use email on your own domain, protect it with two-factor authentication, and set SPF, DKIM and DMARC so your messages reach the inbox and your brand cannot easily be spoofed.

Dsigngo Group and Raiden (Pvt) Ltd register, manage and protect domains and business email for companies in Sri Lanka and the UAE.

Need a domain, or not sure who controls yours? Ask us for a free domain and email check.

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Sources

• LK Domain Registry (registration of .lk domains): https://www.domains.lk/
• Google, Email sender guidelines (requirements from February 2024): https://support.google.com/a/answer/81126
• Yahoo, Sender best practices and requirements: https://senders.yahooinc.com/best-practices/
• DMARC.org, Overview of DMARC: https://dmarc.org/overview/
• ICANN, Domain name registrant basics and expired domains: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/registrants-2012-02-25-en
• Raiden (Pvt) Ltd company profile (authorised reseller brands and services): https://www.raiden.lk