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Domain Names and Hosting
By Derrick | February 29, 2008
When I first started tinkering with the Internet, about 10 years ago, I did what every South African does, and signed up for a domain name and hosting with my ISP. I soon realised that this was less than ideal – what if I wanted to change ISPs? I’ve been through about 5 of them, some because of mergers and some because of switching from dial-up to wireless. So I looked for a hosting company which would be independent of my ISP account.
After a brief search, I found a hosting company that seemed perfect. The account cost me R99 a month (about $13) and allowed me to have a domain name and a MySQL database! They gave me 1000M of disk space, and 1.5GB of bandwidth (it was probably less back then, but that’s what they’re offering now for that price).
After a while, I decided that I wanted another web site. I signed up for another account – a cheaper one this time. Eventually, I had 4 accounts, costing me around R250 a month.
When I started getting interested in the idea of actually making money online, I had two revelations. The first was that I didn’t HAVE to have my account hosted in South Africa. There were US hosting companies like GoDaddy offering vast expanses of disk space and a huge torrent of bandwidth for around $1.99 a month, with .com domain registration for $3.99. So I signed up.
I had about 12 domains hosted with GoDaddy before I had my second revelation. That was that there has to be a cheaper way to do it! Those $1.99 a month charges start adding up quickly, especially if you’re not actually making any money. I found out that there were hosting companies which allowed you to use unlimited domain names with the same account. One fixed monthly charge for hosting, and an annual fee (admittedly higher than GoDaddy’s $3.99) for the domain registration.
I signed up for Hostgator. This was the first time I had used a hosting account with cPanel, and what a shock that was. I suddenly found that my SA hosting company’s grotty control panel and GoDaddy’s abysmal control panel were not the way it had to be. I know that there are people who don’t like cPanel, but what a joy it was compared with the rubbish I’d unwittingly been dealing with.
I found Hostgator easy to get along with, and I’d well and truly switched to the idea of keeping my domain registrations with one company and my hosting with another. I kept seeing recommendations for NameCheap, so I gave them a try. Another revelation! What a pleasure it was to no longer be bombarded with upsell offers as I tried to register a domain name. And another control panel revelation! GoDaddy’s system was s-l-o-w and awkward, while NameCheap’s was quick and easy. Living on the far outer rim of the Internet, the difference in speed was probably much more noticeable to me than to the average American with his 10GB T1 satellite connection.
I proceeded to switch all my domain names from GoDaddy and 2 other registrars who should go nameless (but were actually HostingDude.com, a Godaddy reseller, and Spry.com, a ghastly experience). It took me over a year, waiting for domain name renewals to come round and then transferring them to NameCheap.
I’ve since signed up with 2 other hosting companies, both of which use cPanel and allow multiple domain hosting. These are ResellerZoom, which gives you a real reseller account, including cPanel’s big brother, Web Host Manager, for under $10 a month, and A Small Orange, which does the same – although the disk space and bandwidth at ASO are a bit limited.
One other important point about hosting – never be suckered into paying for 2 years of hosting up front. Money is much better off earning interest in your bank account than in someone else’s. Many hosting providers advertise very low rates which turn out to be the rate for 12 months or a year. Some of them don’t even offer monthly payments – 3 months is the shortest period. And then they add on “set-up charges”.
As the survivalists say, ‘Two is one, one is none’. If your websites generate income you depend on, you need to split them between at least three service providers. Actually, that goes for all aspects of your business. You should try to never be in a position where the catastrophic failure of one service provider affects more than 1/3 of your income. If Google shut down your Adsense account, or raised your Adwords CPCs to $5.00 per keyword, would you still have an income?
I have a second domain registration account at Moniker.com, with a couple of domains registered there. But domain registrars generally don’t fail catastrophically (RegisterFly is a rare exception). As long as you renew your domains in good time, there’s theoretically not that much that can go wrong go wrong.
Topics: Online Business | 18 Comments »
February 29th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Awesome post… and thanks for the link to my article that shows how stoopid I’ve been.
Ed.
February 29th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Hi Derrick,
Great post on domain name and hosting information. A small point to add, while you are right on about not purchasing hosting for more than a year at a time, you should plan to purchase your domains for several years at a time (the ones you actually host sites on, that is). The search engines do take domain name expiration dates into consideration when ranking your site. It’s a small thing, but lots of small things add up!
Keep up the great blogging!
Caroline
February 29th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Hi Caroline,
Thanks for the comment. It’s easy for the search engines to check the expiry date of your domain registration, so I guess that it’s possible they may take it into account. I’d be interested to find out if anyone has done any testing on this…
And I don’t recommend that you purchase hosting a year at a time. Monthly payments should be good enough for any hosting company.
March 2nd, 2008 at 11:24 pm
I did not really test this myself, but I definitely read many people whom I tend to trust in this area saying it matters. Not that it is the primary measure, but given other things being equal, time to expiration can make a difference…
Misha
Map Quest
March 3rd, 2008 at 1:26 am
Good point about having more than one web hosting service. I hadn’t thought about that. That way if one goes down, you’re still in business!
March 5th, 2008 at 6:17 am
All my hosting accounts are monthly. I have 2 dedicated hosts on different services along with a shared hosting account on a couple different places. Even still if any of then died i would be in a world of hurt.
March 7th, 2008 at 3:29 am
I guess having a number of hosts for different business is a good move. Likewise having a migration plan should one host suffer downtime is important also.
And migration plans can be as a shadow setup on another webhost. When the main host goes down, simple redirect the DNS to the backup host. That should limit the downtime to a few hours max.
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:10 am
Your post is very much interesting.From you, I realized that we should keep on and keep on searching for the perfect thing such as company, domain name and hosting where we can find contentment. patient is the only way in finding the best for us. I like our post, you’re such a wise user.I hope you can visit our site and be part of it.http://dcglobal.us/
May 9th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Nice post. Domain name may vary according to purpose. it is better to think wisely what domain name to use. some website are build for business and other’s for personal web hosting only.
August 4th, 2008 at 10:01 am
Great post.All these infos help to many people.
August 19th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Good point about splitting your websites across domain hosts. I currently have all of my sites on Dreamhost and that does present a problem sometimes. I hate to have to learn another system, but I think at some point you just have to do it.
August 20th, 2008 at 3:20 am
I also used to use Godady and other horrible hosting companies–thank god I found hostgator!
Qballs last blog post..Malvern Real Estate
August 21st, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Interesting post – have used both 123-reg, OneandOne and Godaddy for domain names. OneandOne’s user interface is diabolical – try cancelling a domain name with them is tortuous!
SEO Guru – I wish!s last blog post..Seo Adviser: Top Ranking achieved
September 6th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Most people just try to find the lowest price on hosting and run into problems. Alot of sites sell very small packages that people have to pay extra for transfer or space.
Yes you can host a site any place in the world but make sure to try and use domain name for country you want search engine traffic from and or hosting in that country.
September 6th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
I would also suggest people try to find a host who allows them to upgrade anytime to a larger package without any fees.
September 19th, 2008 at 5:23 am
Blue Host is pretty good. Have had problems yet, you can call them with questions, and its not to bad price wise.
June 19th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
I visited this blog first time and found it very interesting and informative. Thanks for sharing such information.
June 20th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Your story reflects the trail every webmaster followed from the dawn of the Internet. We never settle down, as our website evolves, upgrading to a better web hosting provider is the only way to progress. The times were an ISP was also our email and web hosting company has passed. Right now only a dedicated to web hosting firm is able to satisfy the increased demands of a modern website. Choose wisely because if you are hosting a web business this also reflects your credibility. Unreliable website means also unreliable business…