Don’t “Go Cheap” When Choosing Vendors For Domain Registration Services and Website Hosting Services for Eldercare Online Marketing
There are a LOT of companies on the internet who offer extremely low-cost domain registration and website hosting, combined into one package. They seem like good deals and many, many website owners and developers use such vendors.
However, in this case, it’a a bad idea.
Do Not Use the Same Vendor for Domain Registration and for Website Hosting
I recommend that you have your domain name registered with one company and then have its website hosted at another company.
Why?
Because: If you become dissatisfied with the website hosting vendor’s performance, you can very quickly and easily move it to another hosting company. You tell your domain registration company where the website has been moved to, and within a few hours or less, the world sees the site at its new, and presumably more satisfactory, hosting company.
On the other hand, if you become dissatisfied with your domain registrar, it can take a long time to get domain registrations transferred from one registrar company to another. Typically it takes 30 days or so. That’s a long time if the unsatisfactory domain registrar is misdirecting visitors to wrong sites, or taking a long time to respond to browser requests for the website name.
In theory, companies which offer combined domain registration and website hosting should be ethical and allow you to move the hosting to other hosting companies when (not so much if, but when) you become dissatisfied with the hosting, such as when downtimes are common, support is not effective, or page load times become abysmally slow.
So: who should you use for (1) domain registration, and (2) website hosting?
Ensuring Reliable, High-Performance Websites For Eldercare Online Marketing
(1) Domain Registration: GoDaddy
I recommend using GoDaddy for domain name registration. They do a good job and you can get a fair deal from them by shopping specials.
I’ve used GoDaddy for my domain registrations for many years. Currently I have more than 50 domains registered with them (most of my sites have more than one domain name pointing to them for a variety of reasons, which we could discuss some time). They’re not the least expensive, but I get a very good deal from them because I pay to have access to that better deal.
(2) Website Hosting: WPEngine
I recommend WPEngine (for WordPress-based sites)
I used HostGator hosting for many years. Until recently. Now I actively recommend that you not choose HostGator.
Here’s why:
(1) HostGator was recently acquired by a larger company which made a lot of moves that I found to be very unsatisfactory. Those moves probably save them a lot of money but cost their customers dearly in terms of server downtimes, website loading times, customer support and page load times.
HostGator’s customers had to bear the consequences of HostGator’s poorly executed server migrations and subsequent inadequate customer support response, which was, basically, “we’re sorry and we hope you will bear with us, even though we really don’t know how long it will be be until things get better”.
(2) There are hosting companies which cost just a small amount more than HostGator and others like it, and which offer superior uptime, performance and support, and which specialize in hosting WordPress sites. One of those companies is called WPEngine, and that’s the one that I have selected for my current and future WordPress-based sites.
Since we moved to that WPEngine a few months ago, there has been virtually (or perhaps actually) no downtime and the page load times have been cut by as much as 50%. That’s significant for user experience reasons and for Google ranking reasons.
Because I have separated the domain registration from the website hosting, it was a trivial matter to transfer domains from HostGator to WPEngine and they were up and alive and visible to the world on WPEngine in less than 60 minutes. That’s remarkable.
I’m Not Getting Paid For Saying This
I don’t have any affiliate relationship with GoDaddy nor with WPEngine. I just appreciate the highly satisfactory performance, support and value that I receive from them so I’m happy to name them here.
So, that’s my philosophy on domain registration and website hosting. What’s yours?
