Like, yesterday? I own my domain since like 20 years ago…
At very least get it for your email, it can be hosted by proton or any other of many mail providers, on your domain.
If you self host, its mandatory, I think, to have one!!!
If you self host, its mandatory
Technically there’s nothing in the SMTP specs that forbids using IPs directly, but yeah good luck with that 😅
And that would prevent you from changing ISO or holster forever… Ah, not a good idea…
Well not if you own a block of IPs ;)
Now we’re talking!
When you realize you want full control over how your services are labeled.
For a lot of stuff, I just use dynamic DNS. But for email, you really need your own domain, although you can get a service to host it.
But if you want multihoming, DDoS protection, or DNS-layer redirecting or dynamic subdomains of your own, or a guarantee that the domain won’t vanish out from under you, you need your own domain.
Only makes sense if you plan on using it. For private use for example for email, or a small website, blog, portfolio, linktree, whatever. It’s not expensive, though. Less than $10 a year depending on top-level domain and provider.
Less than $10 a year depending on top-level domain and provider.
There’s also 1.111B class xyz domains which are very cheap number only domains at 1 USD a year or so but are longer and less memorable. Useful for private/test uses, although I wouldn’t use it for anything public.
Nice. Though that’s something I don’t see any good use for. I’d rather stick with my memorable $4 a year .de domain 😅
One benefit is to obtain SSL certificates using Let’s Encrypt or similar, which is nice to have even if you’re only hosting services on a LAN/VPN, to avoid certificate warnings (and to benefit from using a reverse proxy). You can use self-signed certificates, but this is annoying in its own right.
You technically don’t need to buy a domain for this since you can use a free DNS provider, but you can use shorter names and sometimes there are cases where you might need to switch DNS providers, in which case you have to change that domain everywhere, which is quite disruptive. If you own your domain, you take it with you when switching DNS providers.
When you want people to go to your website.
Ooooh, that’s a good reason! I once tried to go to https://www.womanhitsmanwithshoeafterheeatsallhersecretclosetchocolate.com/
But it turns out nobody registered that domain.
Get one right now before someone else gets it from under you.
Too late!
Yoink!
If you’re self hosting services on your own network it’s often easier to use a domain rather than have to keep up with home IP address changes. Same if you need to set up some sort of remote access into your network.
Also useful for email, you’ll have infinite amount of email addresses you can use on your own domain. Plus if you ever need to migrate to another email provider you simply point your domain to your new email provider, you never lose your email address this way.
There is also social media that you can use your own domain to show you own your account. e.g. seems to be common at Bluesky.
