How to save money, time and aggravation with all that web stuff

A guest blog by Sarah Wood, Small Business Web Support

You have just started your new business. It’s an exciting if nervous time, and let’s face it, an expensive time. To get this fledgling company off the ground, you choose a business name and register a domain, because you don't want to risk losing it; wise. You went ahead on one of the big hosting providers and registered your domain, maybe two, because you want to cover all the bases for .com, .co.uk.

You’re getting everything set up, and what is one of the very first things you need?

An email address

You head off to Google, sign up for their email accounts, use your nice shiny new email address and you are off.

It's a few months now and all is going well, so you decide you need a website, but Google offers a very basic site, and won’t host the professional website you are looking for, so you sign up with a web developer who builds and hosts your lovely new website for you and everything works fine.

Sound familiar?

It's all going well, but we are about 2 years in now. Every year, you are getting 3 separate bills:
• One for hosting and registering the domain
• One for email
• One for website hosting

And that’s:
• three sets of login details to forget
• three sets of control panels and website URLs to learn
• three different dates to renew
• three sets of credit card details to keep up to date

Did you know that the hosting provider you registered the domain with, may already include website and email hosting there at no extra fee?

And wouldn't it be a whole heap easier to have it all in one place?

Your domain is up for renewal next week, so you decide it's time to get everything in one place.

BUT, domain transfers can take up to 2 weeks to happen, so I would never recommend transfers within a month of renewal to be safe, so either you pay twice this year, or wait 11 months.

It can sometimes be tricky to contact the original web developer who hosts the website, which makes the transfer time-consuming. And what did you do with all those hosting logon details, which email address did you use for which?

Moving the email and website address can take up to 48 hours for the new information to spread round the internet. All this time, the  internet does not know what to do, so emails will ping around like a 1980s game of pong and you may be without your emails for that time.

So what’s the point of this story?

When you start out, take some time to think about what it is you will need. Every business needs an email address. Even if you don’t have the money to invest in a website now, most businesses will eventually need at the very least, a basic website. Talking to a web developer at the beginning will help you understand all the options. Many, like myself, are happy to give you a free consultation.

Get that hosting in the right place at the start and I promise you, it will save you time, aggravation and money in the long run.

And if I had a pound for every time I have heard this story from clients...

In July 2018, Sarah decided to set up Small Business Web Support. Her goal? To take away the technical terror and help people understand what is going on with their domain, website and email. Too many small businesses don’t seem to have control over their own websites, or even know where their website, domain and email are. Simply because they didn’t know the questions to ask, and they weren’t told.

Sarah puts you in control of one of your most important assets, your website & email, and she's here to help you look after it. Get in touch with Sarah for any of your technical issues: smallbusinesswebsupport.co.uk