At the behest of a friend I have put these pages together for those in the truth movement and alternative news arena. I will be giving examples or proof, where possible, when I strongly recommend that something needs to be done.
I have given this section the sub-heading it has because most people buy these items together.
I purchased my first domain (redstorm7.com) and hosting plan in 2002 together through Jodohost.com, a company in India. This is where I learnt the importance of separating out the two. After 2 years or so I decided to move my domain registration to another company (I think it was 1 & 1 out of Germany but with a big presence in the UK) after they tried to hike my domain renewal fee by quite a large amount. When I tried to transfer my domain I was rung up by the company pleading with me not to do so. It took about 2 months to get both my domains and hosting out of the clutches of this company (I decided to move my hosting from them after they gave me problems when I tried transferring out the domain).
I still hadn't learnt my lesson enough though because I had similar problems with 1 & 1 after getting hosting and domain registration with them too. When they did the same thing (hiking my fees for renewal of the domain) I had to contact the CEO of the company in Germany to tell him what was going on to get my domain released, which happened rapidly after I talked to him (you can't do this anymore as the CEOs of companies have become very well insulated from phone calls like mine).
From that point on I made it a point of having a separate company for each - one company for registration of domains and one company for hosting. There are many advantages to this set up and very few disadvantages, if any, apart from keeping track of everything. Most hosting companies give you an introductory price either on your first month, first 6 months, or a deal on a yearly plan, then hike the prices, sometimes by quite a lot, after your initial introductory period has expired.
In the case of a company called Hostwinds.com, they hiked their prices up by more than double because they were switching over to Solid State Drives (SSD - basically a circuit board with chips for storing the data) instead of physically spinning hard drives. They were forcing all their customers over to the new servers, ones which I did not want to go to.
Because I had my domains registered with a different company I was able to find a new hosting company, upload all my sites to the new service and change the domain name server settings at my domain registrar.
By separating out the two you have full control over what you want to pay for hosting. Nowadays, it is made very easy to transfer your domains to another company if you want to do that too although there are still companies, like Godaddy, that make it more difficult than it should be by hiding that step in the user panel.
You also prevent something like this from happening to your sites: Mexican Protest Site Censored. This link shows how Godaddy, working together with ICE, took down a site without prior written notice to the site's owners. This is illegal but you would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to prove that in court. Godaddy is one of the worst hosting companies to host with and to register your domains with. This is not the only instance of Godaddy doing this. They have done this recently in late 2020 but I can't find that info, though I remember reading about it. There are other issues with Godaddy here.
One other issue with Godaddy that I will mention.... they price their products according to your geographic location. Their prices are usually the cheapest if you are in the US. If you are in another country, like the UK for example, they will charge you a different price. For example, as of the 20th June 2023, in the US for a .com domain they charge $21.99 (or $0.01 as an intro offer for the first year), which is actually VERY expensive compared to other domain registration services, whereas in the UK they charge £6.84 for the first year with a two year registration and £17.97 for the second year onwards.
You can't circumvent them by using a VPN because if you pay by credit card they will know where you are located and will change the pricing accordingly. It may work if you use Paypal but I wouldn't bet on it.
Onlydomains charge US$10.99 and that is from the moment you register and for all subsequent years. So Godaddy are a ripoff merchant and those like Danneka Patrick who advertised for them, or used to advertise for them, should be ashamed of themselves (but as with most people, she was not interested in how the company operated. She was just in it for the money unless I am informed otherwise).
So I use Onlydomains to register domains. They are based in New Zealand and have a 24hr help desk/live chat/phone availability with numbers being local to you.
For hosting I now use only 1 company which is Interserver.net, a very affordable hosting company which is based in the US.
With this company you can get 1TB of storage, a dedicated IP address and a private virtual server (VPS) for $6 a month!! To find that deal though you have to dig a little for it.
When you get to their site via the link above, go to the top of the page and click/tap on 'CLOUD VPS'. When the pop out menu appears click/tap on 'VPS HOME' which will be in the top left corner of the window. In the page that comes up scroll down to where the different plans are. Click/tap on the tab that says 'STORAGE VPS' - even though it says 'STORAGE' you can still create a full blown website with this service as this site is on that service. On the next page that comes up scroll down and you will see that the cheapest plan is the 1 Cores.
When you click/tap the "BUY NOW' button you will be prompted to create an account. Please do so, if you have not done so already. You will then be redirected to an order page where you set various options. At least this is what happened last time. They have changed the site design around a bit, so please get onto chat if you need to with them. If you are able to see options this is what I would suggest when choosing them (most, if not all, of the options are pre-filled):
Platform: KVM Storage
Location: New Jersey (or LA, Equinix NY4)
Slices: 1
Image: AlmaLinux (click arrow,▾, on right of box)
Version: 8.3. 64bit
Root Password: [whatever is there/put your own in]
Do NOT choose the control panel option yet. Pay for the above by clicking/tapping 'Proceed' at the bottom of the options panel on the left. After you have paid for it, get on chat and ask for the free version of Direct Admin to be installed. They might give you a hard time and tell you that you need managed service to get that done. Insist that they do this for you because you were not able to get this option without changing the service (if you choose Direct Admin in the right column in the last panel before paying for this package you will see that the storage changes to 30GB or so, and the transfer changes to 1TB). You can even go on chat BEFORE you start anything and ask if its possible to have the free version of Direct Admin with the 1TB storage package for $6 a month. This way you will have a record of what they tell you.
There is only ONE drawback with this company - you have to really stay on top of getting everything squared away with the purchase of the service and the installation of Direct Admin as the 'control panel'. You need to stay on top of the whole process via the customer service chat feature. Yes, their customer service really sucks but by staying on top of every step of the sign-up process you will have a very good yet very cheap VPS system that only a few years ago cost over $200 a month!!!!!
Anyway, you will find that most of the best prices for hosting are to be found in the States. Most other countries have companies that have nowhere near the features, bandwidth and capabilities as the companies in the US have. The downside is that there is more censorship going on now in the US than elsewhere.
Which takes us to Step 3 - protecting your domain and online presence from being destroyed.
This page was last modified on 24 January 2024 @ 8:52pm EST