It is not uncommon for individuals or companies to be tempted by so-called cheap services that bundle domain registration, hosting, and email together. At first glance, everything may seem appealing and promising. However, it often becomes apparent that the quality is lacking. As they say, the devil is in the details.
If you are not a technical person, it is not recommended to pretend that you are and spend too much time on technical details that you really do not need to know. This can make you feel overwhelmed and frustrated. Too often, people find themselves locked into a single company for their website, domain, email service, etc., making it difficult or costly to switch providers. They often wonder, “Why did it end up this way?” The answer is usually, “I tried to save money.” This approach often results in a business becoming too reliant on poor-quality services, making it extremely difficult to transition to a better provider.
These recommendations come from my experience and the common challenges people encounter, as seen in reviews on platforms like Trustpilot and others.
The key takeaway is to remain as independent as possible and avoid putting all your eggs in one basket. But what does this mean in the context of managing a website?
It usually comes with your Registrar and it is free of charge. Free, means not that reliable and fast as it could be. Consider to have an independent Premium DNS server. It doesn’t have to be with your Registrar, but usually it can be found there. Every Registrar have an option to point to external DNS server that you can use for configuring DNS records. Of course, Registrars can offer you a separate product/service, such as a Premium DNS.
By this point, you should have control over your domain and an independent email service. With these in place, your business can function without a website if necessary. Just having a professional email in your domain (like contact@mydomain.com) email can work just fine.
Let’s back to hosting server. Choose wisely. You would not pick the bare host server. Too much hustle. It will be the company that takes care of building a website and then hosting it and invoicing for it. This company can configure your domain (that you posses and control) in order to have connected you email address to your domain and will configure DNS server to point to your hosting server.
Be as independent as possible. Keep your domain with a reliable and trustworthy Registrar and pay for quality. At the same time, only pay for the domain and usually not for other services (unless you understand what and why you are paying for — like Premium DNS, for example). Protect your domain as if it were your bank account.
Having your own domain enables you to have an email server in your domain. Pick an independent email server provider, or if you do not know how and what to choose, reach out to a company that will be building and hosting your website.
In short, the most important thing is to keep your domain name separate from other services. Your domain is your brand and/or flag under which you offer your services, so it’s vital to manage it independently. Avoid bundled packages that include hosting and email servers, as they may lure you in with low prices for the first year, only for the renewal costs to knock you down. Additionally, having independent providers makes it easier to replace any particular service without disrupting others that are functioning well.
