If you decide to switch your business name and/or domain name, we suggest keeping your old domain names rather than allowing them to lapse. Here’s why:

• Competitors as well as other random people can acquire your lapsed domain and put content on it that will reflect badly on your business.
• Once customers are accustomed to one domain name, they often have a hard time transitioning to a new name. If you keep the old domain, you can likely set up a redirect that redirects a user from the old domain to the new one, or at a minimum, create a simple landing page with a link to your new domain.

Maintaining multiple domain names is a small financial investment, but weighed against the alternative -- potentially confusing and losing loyal customers -- it is often a worthwhile strategy.

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