Website hosting + Emails for small business

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mattwnz

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#1498612 24-Feb-2016 15:55

jonathan18:

Yeah, I'm planning on going with Office 365 Personal for $10 a month, which provides the full and downloadable versions of the Office apps (which my wife needs), whereas the Business Essentials uses online versions of the apps BUT does come with an email service (50GB mailbox), which the Personal version doesn't.

My wife will use Outlook for accessing her email, but I'm still not clear (as per my first post) as to whether registering the domain will provide the ability to redirect emails to an Outlook email address, or whether I need to pay say 1st Domains that extra few dollars to have this feature. Or indeed if I elected for one of the Office 365 Business packages with email (Essentials or Premium) whether that would achieve the same means.

I'm kind of ignoring the sweeteners that the web hosting companies offer, as they are often time-limited and/or place other limitations on picking the best package for my wife - all up, picking each service that'll work still seems damn affordable:

Register domain: $24.73/year (1st Domains)

Email service: $24.15/year (1st Domains - if needed?)

Website hosting: $130/year (SquareSpace)

Email and other Office apps: $119/year (Office 365 Personal)

Totals under $300 (incl. GST) a year...

You need to budget on these prices pricing substantially. eg Microsoft has recently raised some of it's prices cloud hosting services. These SAAS services are currently priced low to get people hooked. You are best long term to use a system that allows you to easily move providers at any time, which is something a Wordpress website for example offers you.

timmmay

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#1498617 24-Feb-2016 16:04

mattwnz:

The two biggest things that haven't been discussed in depth is good reliability, and good support. So email a few of them to find out how quick they reply, and do some research into them. If they take longer than a day to reply, forget them. Also how long the business has been around for is a good guide as hosts come and go, get bought out etc. When bought out, they can go to the dogs. I have been with several where this has happened. Also the lowest priced options are usually never the best. It is a business site, so be prepared to pay reasonable rates. For a website, avoid software as a service systems, as they will change their pricing, as many are running at a loss to aquire business. I am with an ecommerce provider who has raised some of their prices for some customers significantly. Very difficult and expensive to change after you have set it up. Use something like wordpress ,concrete5 drupal, silverstripe, joomla etc instead. You then own the website, you aren't just renting it.

No shared host I've tried offers good support in the long term. I gave up and moved to AWS. Paying business rates (I'm talking $50 a month MINIMUM) might get you some decent support. That's not unreasonable though, good people doing tech support work probably get paid near that, plus all the overheads of employment, the servers, bandwidth, so an hour of their time is worth at least $50.

HostGator got worse when bought out. They raised their prices recently, which was the last straw to me moving. Since I used Wordpress moving was relatively easy.

jonathan18

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#1498625 24-Feb-2016 16:13

Email provision: at the risk of taking over this thread (but I think the question is totally pertinent to the OP's query) -

For a small business, which is one best to use (assuming the end interface is Outlook on all devices):

* an email account provided by the domain registrar (such as https://1stdomains.nz/email/#features)

* email account through a version of Office 365 that supports this (eg https://products.office.com/en-nz/business/office-365-business-premium)

* some other provider?

Does one of these offer any greater level of security/stability of service for example?

I'd planned on going with 1stdomains, but given it's only about $3 net additional amount to go for 365 business premium, with its advantages of installing Office on multiple computers, I'm now not sure; if one of these methods offers other advantages that may sway it a particular way.

Thanks for any advice!

timmmay

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#1498641 24-Feb-2016 16:36

Office 365 security will be better than any local host, because of scale and reputation. Gmail will be similar. I wouldn't use web host provided email again.

mattwnz

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#1498677 24-Feb-2016 17:22

timmmay:

No shared host I've tried offers good support in the long term. I gave up and moved to AWS. Paying business rates (I'm talking $50 a month MINIMUM) might get you some decent support. That's not unreasonable though, good people doing tech support work probably get paid near that, plus all the overheads of employment, the servers, bandwidth, so an hour of their time is worth at least $50.

HostGator got worse when bought out. They raised their prices recently, which was the last straw to me moving. Since I used Wordpress moving was relatively easy.

There is the odd smaller NZ and US host that still provide great support.. But the larger ones I have found the support has gone down, you can be waiting days to get a simple support ticket reply. $50 per month for hosting with good support and reliability for a business IMO is still great value, if it is something that works well and you don't have to worry about it, as it can be a huge part of many businesses these days. People who buy $10 buck hosting, and then complain that it is poor quality with poor support don't get that much sympathy, as $10 isn't going to go very far to pay for staff etc.

Ragnor

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#1498678 24-Feb-2016 17:22

The budget all in one hosts are generally terrible, I second the advice to separate your domain: domain registrar/dns hosting, email hosting and web hosting so you have more control and if one provider is not performing you can switch it out for another provider easily.

My personal recommendations are:

1: Domain Registration/DNS: Metaname, it's a few bucks per domain per year more than the cheapest nz registrar's but way better support and a way better web control panel/ui.

2: Email Hosting: Office 365 or Google Apps

3: Web Hosting: If you just want local shared web/wordpress hosting look at openhost or umbrellar. If you want an overseas hosted shopify or sqaresquare might suit your requirements.

mattwnz

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#1498729 24-Feb-2016 19:23

Ragnor:

3: Web Hosting: If you just want local shared web/wordpress hosting look at openhost or umbrellar. If you want an overseas hosted shopify or sqaresquare might suit your requirements.

One is proper web hosting, one is a software as a service. I would be wary of ecommerce SaaS as pricing can rise significantly , and they often work on a shared success model, where you pay a percentage of your turnover in some form. If you want full control and move between hosts when they go bad, wordpress and woocommerce is a good option.

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

timmmay

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#1498733 24-Feb-2016 19:49

mattwnz:

One is proper web hosting, one is a software as a service. I would be wary of ecommerce SaaS as pricing can rise significantly , and they often work on a shared success model, where you pay a percentage of your turnover in some form. If you want full control and move between hosts when they go bad, wordpress and woocommerce is a good option.

Would you mind defining "ecommerce SaaS", or giving an example? Are you talking about websites that sell for you? A percentage can be a fair way of paying them. Wordpress isn't great for sales, you basically have to have custom written sales code written and then integrated with WP. I'd say you're better off using a platform design for sales and security from the outset, but I'm sure it's possible to do it well on WP.

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