My simple answer to this question is – YOU.  I have run into many clients who have had online companies purchase and maintain domain names for them.  Here are some of the problems that they seem to run into:

1.  The company won’t release their domain name to anyone else.  Basically meaning, if Bob Smith calls up his current company and says that he doesn’t want to renew www.bobsmith.com with them, but with another company (or even on his own), the company will keep renewing www.bobsmith.com just so that poor old Bob can’t have that domain name UNLESS he renews it with them. 

2.  The company will refuse to do some necessary changes to help with SEO.  I have had several clients who have asked their current domain name provider to change the meta description or title tags so that the title of their website is more relavent.  These companies will sometimes claim that they are simply “unable to do that”.  They basically say this because they do not want to do any extra work outside of the necessary purchase of the domain name itself.

3.  You pay a company to build a website and purchase a domain name for you and they “tell you” that after you pay for a certain period of time, you own the website.  This is partially true.  In order for you to own the website, you will have to transfer all the files from that particular company to the company who you are going to host the website through.  A lot of companies won’t be quick to let their clients leave them, therefore may come up with many reasons why they “simply are unable to transfer the files” within the same time frame as you would like.

4.  Purchasing a domain name on your own is usually much cheaper.  Let’s face it.  The online company has to be making a profit somewhere.  Domain names on GoDaddy go for $8-$10 a year in most cases.  I’ve heard of clients who pay $100 a year for theirs. 

5.  Your company may forget to renew the domain name, which may cost you in the end.  On the Keystone Blog, they recently posted a story about George Bush planning on opening a library.  Whoever was managing his domain, forgot to renew it, and it was bought up by someone who was watching for expired domains.  Companies will do this to make a huge profit, and they were clearly successful because they sold it back to the foundation for $35,000.  It’s a pretty big price to pay for merely forgetting to renew a domain name. 

My solution is to buy the domain name yourself, mangae it yourself, and make sure you don’t forget to renew it.  This way you are the only one in control.  I recommend buying your domain through a well-known, big company such as GoDaddy or Name.com.