Free as in, FREE?
There’s nothing better than the sound of FREE – so from day one, we had always thought about giving away a free .PK domain name to our clients. This was a tough ask, simply because .PK domain names (like any other top-level domain) cost money, and that given something was free, we’d run into losses pretty soon.
You’ll save 78%!
So, in doing so, we thought about a win-win situation, where our most loyal customers would get a rebate towards their domain purchase every year, and offset up to 78% of the cost of owning a .PK domain name. There were a few considerations to make, and we ironed them out easily. Let me explain.
You need one, really.
The necessity of having a domain name for your business is self explanatory – you just can’t function in an online world with a website on some free service, nor can you convince big ticket customers that you’re a serious business without having you@yourdomain email for business. It just doesn’t cut as being professional, and professionalism is the need of the hour.
That said, may businesses consider buying a domain name, a cost that they simply don’t want to deal with – more so they have the same reservations about paying for hosting or email, or services that to them seem to be behind-the-scenes gimmicks, that really never pay back. This is a misnomer, simply because most people look at technology as an expense and not as an investment. An expense is harder to justify, while an investment, is just that, an investment which pays off with time.
The .PK Argument
And the idea of not having a website is all over the place, with most people considering their Facebook page to be the web page they always wanted – and we all know, Facebook is ONE of the places where you ought to be, not THE place you ought to be. As user profiles diversify, prospects could be spread all across social media channels, or some, or none – and with the rapidly changing nature of social media platforms, you could loose your page, your rank, your traffic any other day. To counter this, the idea of being online, in the reach of Google’s notorious search monolith, you ought to have an online presence, a domain name, a website and regularly updated content that keeps your users engaged and entertained. Pretty much like this blog post.
There are costs, of course, your domain name, web hosting, the website itself and advertising. We’re going to tackle all of these in future but for now, let’s get back to the fact that a domain name is essential and that we wanted to offer domains free to our clients. There’s no easy way to do this because today in 2022 domain names come in all forms and sizes, if not prices as well. Then we’re a Pakistani company, so there was the idea of promoting the .PK, which makes the most sense to promote Pakistani businesses with a .PK domain rather than a .COM or a .SOMETHINGELSE (ignore this one, since I made it up).
It’s just Rs3,000!?
So in all fairness, we decided on a price for our .PK domain names to be Rs3,000 when registered through CloudWeb – this includes, hassle free registration of your domain name for two years, along with DNS services, i.e. if you so require, we can configure a cPanel DNS Only account for you, if you want to have direct access to your domain’s DNS entries via the cPanel Zone Editor. Then there’s the fact that we manage your domain for you – say your renewal was coming up, so we’d try to get in touch and remind you of the renewal, and send you automated invoices – those kinds of things. So the domain costs a little more than what you’ll pay at PKNIC and not to mention, doing it yourself could make you cry! But we made a video for you, just in case you wanted to try.
The Formula
Since .PK domains cost us Rs2,350 per domain for a two year period, we thought it was only fair to offer a rebate – give you this money back. So, when your domain name is registered through us, and you choose to subscribe to one of our web hosting plans for a year, you receive a rebate of Rs1,175 every year, credited to your account. That way, you will get Rs2,350 back every two years to pay towards any services you want to order or renew. It’s that simple. It’s the closest to free we can get.
The Rs2,350 Rebate
In summary, here’s how you can get a rebate of Rs2,350 — i.e. a free .PK domain name every two years:
- Order your .PK domain name through CloudWeb (that’s us!).*
- Order any of our web hosting plans and choose to pay yearly.
- Get in touch with our billing team to have them issue a credit.**
Should you have any questions, feel free to get in touch or leave a comment, should you wish to contribute.
* We’re working on a domain ordering system at this time, so until that’s online, feel free to register your domain by getting in touch. Our team can swiftly check domain name availability for you and process your order.
** A credit of Rs1,175 is issued per domain per year. This offsets the cost of your domain by Rs. 2,350 every two years.
