I want to have my own domain. Primarily in order to have the flexibility on my email addresses (and those of my family) and also for potentially setting up a web page or two or a personal family blog or two.
What would be the recommendation for best host for those needs?
Second question: my brother and I have an idea for a web site we’d like to set up, first because we think we’d enjoy the focus/topic, and secondly with the admittedly long shot hope that it might become fairly popular. Would the same domain host above be the best for a potentially high volume web site?
no. you’d want something like inmotionhosting that can give you technical support and a service level agreements so that you dont lose money during outages.
no. you’d want something like inmotionhosting that can give you technical support and service level agreements so that you dont lose money during outages.
You can start with the basic plan and move up as much as you need to in the future. I’ve had good experiences with their support ( although I haven’t had to deal with it much).
If there’s only one domain price doesn’t matter, so go with a decent registrar that isn’t evil, like Gandi. GoDaddy do numerous evil things so unless you own lots of domains and the raw price savings would be significant, avoid.
Once you’ve registered your domain, sign up with google apps. Gmail is great!
Second question: my brother and I have an idea for a web site we’d like to set up, first because we think we’d enjoy the focus/topic, and secondly with the admittedly long shot hope that it might become fairly popular. Would the same domain host above be the best for a potentially high volume web site? This.
The best domain host is someone who makes it easy to move away if you need to, and GoDaddy is NOT a winner there. They are under investigation for scummy business practices, so don’t recommend them.
I’ve got a reseller account with ResellerClub, and there are auth codes easily available at the click of a button. A reseller under them is going to let you move away without problems.
Another one I’ve used for a long time is SiteGround. Their web accounts allow parking of other domains, and then receiving e-mail for them. You don’t ACTUALLY have to point the domain, only the mailservers, and you get a damn good mail system with decent spam filters. Plus full control, and no Google filtering your mail and serving targetted ads. Auth codes are sent by e-mail, so one step less easy to get away from SG.
Thanks for the suggestions, and special thanks to avoid GoDaddy. I’d probably have avoided them just because their ads are so irritating (got nothing against boobage, just not in my choice for a serious domain host.)
Most of the FUD about godaddy is just whining by self-proclaimed ‘internet entrepreneurs’ who have PHP problems and blame it on godaddy. They never do truly terrible things like kill kittens, or delete your grandma’s knitting blog after it gets hacked, or spy on you for the CIA. It’s just the mild money-grubbing flavour of evil.
They just prohibit you from transferring your domain away for 60 days after a WHOIS update (prohibited by ICANN). Or they charge you a hefty ‘processing fee’ to renew your domain if you want to renew it in the 5 day period following initial expiry (where you - the domain owner - still have full rights to the domain as specified by ICANN).
Of course, there’s plenty more where that came from, but those are the two I’ve recently run into.
Now that I think about it, years ago Bluehost used Godaddy for domain registration for a while, until customer complaints about transferring domains caused them to switch registrars.
I’ve been using Hostmonster fairly successfully for a long time. I have a bunch of domains on one account that costs me about $85/year. They probably oversell their servers, but most of 'em do that. They are a subsidiary of Bluehost.
I’ve been using GoDaddy for many years with a couple dozen domains and haven’t had any problems… I haven’t moved any to another registrar (I moved from NetworkSolutions to GoDaddy), but have transferred domains to other companies and haven’t had any issues there. They try to upsell like crazy, which is kind of annoying, but that’s why it’s cheap.
Ok I’m just gonna appropriate this thread rather than starting a new one:
What are people using for domain hosting and why? Thanks. I’m with Godaddy but I’m thinking of change (they can’t sms me my verification code to log on for SEVERAL DAYS, just when my domain is about to expire. 😬).
At this point it is just for email, no plan to build a website or anything on top.
I’ve looked at Bluehost, Crazy Domain (with a name like that, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence…). They are all pretty meh and not necessarily an upgrade. Dreamhost looks kinda ok. I just want reliable service and let me log on and give them money at will (unlike Godaddy), private WHOIS, and relatively cheap.
Dreamhost is more than suitable for most folks and is priced pretty well. Heads above GoDaddy. Send them an email describing your situation and they might actually be able to take care of the transfer for you.
