A Firm's Domain Built on the Partners' Surnames

Three surnames in one address

A firm named after its partners usually registers the surnames as its domain, run together into one long string of letters. On the day the firm opens, it is the obvious choice.

Every email address carries the same string, and so do the letterhead, the cards, the sign in the lobby and every directory entry.

Then a partner retires, joins another firm or leaves after a disagreement, and the firm name, the domain and every address built on it come up for decision at once.

None of it is difficult. It goes wrong when it is decided in a hurry, or by whoever happens to hold the login.

What hangs off the domain

• Every staff email address, including ones clients saved years ago.
• The website, with its search history and the links pointing to it.
• Directory and association listings that print the address.
• Letterhead, cards and signs, reprinted only when stock runs out.
• Logins for banks, software and suppliers tied to one partner's address.
• The registration itself, often in one partner's personal name.

The last causes the real trouble. The registrant, the legal holder of the domain, is the person the registrar deals with, whatever the partners agreed among themselves.

Whose name is on the registration

Domains are often registered by whichever partner set up the first website, with their own name and personal email address as the contacts.

That works until the partner leaves. Renewal notices then go to an inbox nobody at the firm reads, and registrars can suspend a domain whose owner does not confirm their email address when asked.

Moving the registration needs the current holder's cooperation: a quick step while the partners are on good terms, a slow one after a falling-out.

So the first job is to put the registration in the firm's legal name, with a contact address the firm controls rather than a person's.

The firm name comes first

The domain follows the name, so settle the name before touching anything technical.

Many firms keep a founder's name long after the founder has gone, because clients know it. Then the domain can stay too, and the work shrinks to the registration and one mailbox.

Lawyers and accountants should also check their professional body's rules on firm names, which can limit what a firm may keep, drop or add.

An address that can outlast the partners

The best time to choose a durable domain is before anyone leaves.

Ask what clients actually call the firm. It is rarely all three surnames. More often it is the first one, and that shorter form usually makes a better address.

Initials are short but easy to mistype, and three letters say nothing about the work. A surname plus the trade, or plus the town, is clearer when read out over the phone.

Register the short form now, even while the full name stays on the letterhead, and point it at the same site, in both .ca and .com.

Email is the hardest part

A website can be redirected in an afternoon. Email addresses are scattered through clients' contact lists, old files and other firms' systems, and people keep using them for years.

A departing partner's address should keep working for at least a year, forwarding to whoever takes over their clients, with an automatic reply giving the right contact. It should never be deleted or handed to someone new.

If the domain changes, every mailbox should accept mail at both addresses for as long as the old domain is renewed. Replies go out from the new one, and clients' address books catch up gradually.

A worked example

An asphalt sealing company with two trucks and a summer crew was named after its two founding partners, and its domain joined both surnames with a hyphen. The trucks and the crew's lawn signs carried it.

One partner retired last winter and sold out to the other. The domain was registered in the retiring partner's own name, with a personal email address as the contact.

Renewal was due in the spring, and the notices would have gone to someone no longer involved. Customers, meanwhile, kept mishearing the hyphen on the phone.

Before the sale closed, the registration moved to the company. The remaining owner chose a shorter trading name for next spring and registered a domain built on one surname and the word sealing.

Both domains now reach the same site and mailboxes. The old one stays registered and redirects, and the trucks and signs will carry the new one when they are next lettered.

Planning the switch

When the domain does change, the order matters more than the speed.

Set up the new domain and its mailboxes first, and test them. Then move the site, with every old page sending visitors to its matching new page through a permanent redirect, not all of them to the home page.

Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) has a change of address setting for this move, once both domains are verified and the redirects are working.

Then update the Google My Business listing, directory and association entries, social profiles and email signatures. Reprint stationery as each item runs out.

Keep the old domain for years

An old domain should never be allowed to lapse.

Once it expires, anyone can register it, and whoever does receives every email still sent to the old addresses: clients' questions, signed documents, sometimes confidential files.

Renew it for several years ahead, leave automatic renewal on, and keep the redirects and old addresses working. It costs little next to what it protects.

The counter-case

A firm that keeps its founders' names indefinitely may never need a new domain. For it, the work is the registration and one departing person's mailbox.

And a long domain that clients already use is not worth replacing for its own sake; a shorter address added alongside it does most of the good.

Even so, register the domain to the firm, add an address people can say aloud, and plan the switch before a partner change forces it.

Before the next partner change

1. Check who holds the registration today.
2. Move it into the firm's name while everyone agrees.
3. Use a firm address as the domain contact.
4. Register the short form clients actually say.
5. Turn on automatic renewal for every domain.
6. List every account tied to one partner's email.
7. Write down the email plan for departures.

Step two is the one that cannot wait. It needs the current holder's agreement, which is easiest to get when nobody is leaving.

The same question seen from the person who leaves is covered in the address you leave behind when you change firms.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.