The Pros & Cons: Affordable Domain Hosting Plus A Website Builder
• Hosting Plans With Built-in Website Builders Do Have Their Limitations •
• Be Aware Of Exactly What You Get For The Money! •
So, you’re getting ready to begin your online marketing career, and it’s really important to you to find an all-in-one type of affordable domain hosting. You want a website builder to be included with the hosting service? No problem. There are so many of these types of services available today, that it can be quite a task to weed through them all. If you are like I was in the beginning, I had NO clue about how one gets started on the internet.
Whether you’re a newbie, or even a semi-seasoned online marketer, you might not be knowledgeable about what separates a good hosting service from a mediocre one. You really need to be careful, yes CAREFUL of what the domain hosting service offers you before you plunk down your cash. There are a lot of crummy companies out there offering very little service for too much money.
And part of the problem is the dangling of the carrot in front of the newbie’s nose with the lure of a website builder as part of the hosting package. Some companies offer it free, while others charge extra if you want it included. Some site builders are pretty darn good and others just plain stink!
Which Domain Hosting Service Can You Trust?
Well, you are pretty safe with these two web hosting giants: GoDaddy or Yahoo!. I do have a hosting account with GoDaddy, however do not use their “WebSite Tonight” sitebuilder tool. I do have hands-on experience with the “Yahoo! SiteBuilder” as I have a few clients who use it and I’ve had to access it to teach them how to do certain things, and to upload SEO tags and such for them.
These site builders can be incorporated into the hosting packages. There are many price points and options, so please go to each company and compare for yourself.
Another company where I have most of my websites hosted is IX Web. They have great hosting package options for the money, except I will say their site builder is not as sophisticated as GoDaddy’s or Yahoo’s. As a matter of fact it is pretty limited, but you can build a website with it.
Customer service provided by these three companies is very good. You may have to hang on for more than a few minutes sometimes to get to a customer service representative, but I can honestly say they all try very hard to offer excellent support. I have only experienced polite and helpful reps when I have had to call for help.
Of course there are many other affordable domain hosting services. And many offer pretty decent hosting packages. Just stay away from their website builders! But suffice it to say I feel very confident in writing about and referring you to the three domain hosting companies discusssed here.
Let’s Take A Look At Site Builders
One of the biggest complaints professional website designers, and other internet professionals like myself can voice about the domain hosting + template packages, is that in many respects these companies do profit by creating unrealistic “newbie” expectations as to what can be achieved marketing-wise. Suggesting that you can have a truly professional website at the click of a button is not realistic.
What’s missing from these site builders is the knowledge about how to properly design for visitor AND search engine friendliness. That knowledge of course comes from either you pouring over how-to tutorials, or hiring an experienced professional.
I speak from experience as I started my internet marketing career using an all-in-one domain hosting service (name withheld because I can’t recommended it in good conscience) and I had no clue about website design, but I did get a website up and running. And I was lucky in that it included SEO how-to information (most don’t), but EGADS!
When it came time to hire a professional web designer (GraphicsWerx.com) to redesign my sites, I quickly discovered what a coding mess site builders cause. It wasn’t an easy task for me to clean-up and transfer 90 pages of content from a gobbly-de-gook of coding into my newly designed website template.
Anyway … I’ll be posting more about this in the future, but for this post, let me end with this: the vast majority of serious internet marketers will decide to progress from their “instant websites” to professionally designed websites or blogs within a year or two.
So be forewarned that your “site builder” built website will not be easily transferred into a professionally designed template. Plus more than likely it will be a bit of a hassle to transfer it to a new hosting company. For the newbie starting out, “instant websites” created by site builders are great, don’t get me wrong. Without them, many people could not be online trying to live their dream of working from home, having an online business, etc. But there are often many pitfalls.
I’d like to help you by alerting you to the major issues you ought to have a very clear understanding of before you sign up for your hoped for “affordable domain hosting with site builder”. I am addressing the most basic of concerns that someone just starting out should be aware of. I could add scads more to this list.
- Is my domain name registered in my name? In other words, do I own it?
- Am I able to register my domain name with another company when it comes time to pay the yearly registration fee? Are there any hidden costs to do so?
- Can my domain (website) be moved to another host? How long does the transfer process take?
- Can I upload my own custom designed web pages and files, or am I stuck having to use your site builder?
- Is there a limit on the number of pages I can have on my website? (often referred to as web space)
- Is there a limit on the number of images I can have on a page or have stored on your servers? (again, this is referring to web space)
- Can I write my own search-engine-friendly URLs?
- Am I able to insert a Title tag, and the Description and Keyword Meta tags for each web page? Are these tags properly configured and coded within the site builder page?
- Is there any limitation on a page’s content length?
- Will there be advertising on each of my web pages? (I will call this forced advertising as you cannot remove it.)
- If I want to sell products, is there a shopping cart feature, or does that cost extra?
- What kind of customer service comes with not only my hosting package, but my site builder? (The hosting company I first did business with only had email support! Do you know how frustrating that was?? Yuck … make sure you can pick up a phone and call.)
Good luck in reseaching the right affordable domain hosting service. I’ve given you three safe bets … please check them out.
