If You Buy Your Domain Separate From Your Web Hosting, What Do You Need to Make Sure That You Do?
Should You Keep Your Domains and WordPress Hosting Separate or Together?
There are several pop providers that offer both domains and hosting for WordPress. Since the beginning of the internet, a placidity storm has been raging under our noses between 'one-stop' shop providers and internet experts … domains and hosting together forever, or living apart but yet friends?
Oct 2020: We tested all the best WordPress hosts! Find out how nosotros compare.
Providers will tell you lot that it makes sense to house your site in the same place where y'all got your domain, specially since many offer seamless user interfaces for managing both and some will too throw in free domains when yous purchase hosting.
Many web experts, still, warn that this seemingly natural pairing could plough sour and indicate to a number of reasons, such as possible security risks and lack of stability as a reason to forego convenience and continue domains and hosting carve up.
Proceed reading, or leap ahead using these links:
- Let'due south Back Up A Niggling…
- Different Domain & Hosting Scenarios
- Domains & Hosting or Domains vs Hosting?
- Organization
- Cost
- Trust
- Support
- Command
- Options
- Security
- Human Mistake
- Stability
- Ownership
- In Conclusive…
In this post, we investigate the pros and cons of keeping your domains and your WordPress hosting together vs keeping them divide, and whether the argument is nevertheless relevant or even considered skillful practice for WordPress.
We've also got a video you lot can watch (Yay!) …
Let'due south Support A Little…
Accept you heard the expression "Renaissance Human being"?
It all started with Leonardo da Vinci, the famous Italian painter, sculptor, architect, musician, engineer, mathematician, and scientist.
A "Renaissance Man" refers to a person with many talents or areas of knowledge. (At this point, I have to repent to all women. Unfortunately, a "Renaissance Adult female" doesn't hateful the same thing. It refers to the idea that a woman was supposed to ally well, be loyal to her husband and requite birth to boys. I know, and then 1500's right? I don't know what the Mona Lisa had to smile nearly. Sorry, all women!)
Anyway, 150 years later, the "Renaissance Man" evolved into the geniuses (not genii) of the 17th century, like Isaac Newton, influential composers and painters like Bach, Vivaldi and Rembrandt, and swell philosophers, mathematicians and scientists similar Descartes, Galileo, Pascal, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire and Spinoza.
Ok, so what's all this got to practice with WordPress, domains and hosting?
Hang on, I promise I'll become there in only one more sentence.
So… fast forward some other 100 years to the industrial revolution… blah… blah… division of labor… age of specialization… more subdivision of labor… age of hyperspecialization, yada… yada… information age, and and then finally … here nosotros are in the digital age (some of us are not all there, yet!).
And there you have it. Nosotros now live in an age where things accept become so complex and specialized that no single individual can master anything (or even much of nothing).
Whereas polymaths like Leo d. could, in only one unmarried lifetime, become primary painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, engineers, mathematicians, scientists, writers, and still play a hateful lute in the hours where nothing skillful can happen (or become a Wall Street stockbroker tycoon, unlicensed pilot and daredevil aviator, wilderness survival expert, diamond prospector, undercover amanuensis, and dream thief, depending on which Leo d. we're talking about), all we tin can practice present is try to spend our attention-deficient and information overloaded lives struggling to stay on top of i area of knowledge, only to discover that there'southward so much more to learn.
It's crazy, I know! But I'm not talking well-nigh trying to fill crazy job titles like Chick Sexer (someone who determines the sex of chickens), Magician of Low-cal Bulb Moments (Marketing Managing director),Dream Alchemist (Head of Creative) or even WordPress Blogger/Evangelist (hey, that'southward my task title), I'm talking about the pressures and demands of modern life and global competition forcing the states to spend all our time and try trying to become experts and specialists in very narrow fields. Otherwise, how else practise we explain academic dissertations with titles like "The Particle-Wave Duality Equally An Example Of Uncertainty", or "What Is A Hawking Radiation In A Setting With Trapped Ions?", or even a page turner that's so fly, like "Genetics and Reproductive Isolation of Rhagoletis Flies (Fruit Fly, Eclosion, Speciation, Electrophoresis, Host Selection)"?
Which brings us dorsum to the point about WordPress, domains and hosting.
If you want the very best setup for your WordPress site, you lot will want your domains to be looked subsequently by people who truly know and empathize nigh managing domains. The same goes for hosting. And as we have explained in Shared, VPS, Dedicated or Cloud Hosting? Which is Best for WordPress?, there are lots of options to consider when it comes to WordPress hosting (which, bespeak in case, is a specialized area of hosting itself).
And then, is it possible that, in our ultra hyperspecialized earth, we can notice a provider that offers the best domain management service and the best WordPress hosting service to fit our specific needs and budget, all under 1 roof?
The answer is both "yep" and "no".
Information technology's no, because it takes great expertise and resource to pull this off, and it's yes, because, thanks to 'vertical integration' and 'corporate cannibalization,' it's possible for large companies to offer a 'one-stop' solution where domains and hosting tin all alive together and be beautifully managed.
Corporate cannibalization? Eeeww! (Source: tenor.com)
As nosotros will soon see, however, at that place are some criteria to consider before making the decision to keep domains and hosting together or separate.
So, what'southward the criteria I hear ya enquire? How do we define the domain and gain the host with the virtually in this mail?
To aid reply this puzzler, permit's go through different domain and hosting scenarios, and so compare these confronting different criteria.
Dissimilar Domain & Hosting Scenarios
Let'due south say you're only starting out on an illustrious career as a WordPress programmer.
The world is filled with WordPress developers and you lot desperately need your kickoff client. So, similar a modernistic Tech Renaissance man woman polymath, you advertise yourself as "Digital Overlord, Full Stack Sorcerer, Scrum Master, Growth Hacker, Innovation Sherpa, Security Princess" and in no fourth dimension, your first client walks in through the door.
The client wants a simple WordPress website for their modest business. You figure, "why merely sell websites?" Why non become a 'ane-finish' shop, put all your skills to adept use, and make coin not merely from WordPress development, but likewise website management, digital marketing, WordPress optimization, web security, and spider web hosting?
Then, y'all find a 'one-cease' hosting provider that offers domain registrations, domain management, and hosting all under the one roof. And they have an chapter program besides!
Bada-bing, bada-blindside … you're in business!
Equally per your promise to have care of all your clients' digital needs, yous annals and ready their domain proper name, purchase space in a shared hosting server and set their account, and build them a scrumptious-looking website using WordPress.
Your client is happy with their new site and tells everyone nearly your services. Pretty shortly, yous get another customer. They desire a website for their small-scale business too, only they likewise ain a couple of domains they desire to park for now and build later. As you work on their site, some other client comes through your door. This fourth dimension, the client has slightly dissimilar needs, which include developing a custom plugin.
Your business looks prepare to grow, so you decide it's probably best to upgrade from shared hosting to a virtual private server. Lucky for you, your hosting company too offers some peachy VPS hosting packages, so you upgrade and carry on with your business concern.
Every bit you begin to land more clients, pretty soon you realize that every new client that walks in the door has unlike and very specific needs.
1 client needs an eCommerce site with custom applications and 3rd-party integrations, another wants to run a Multisite installation for a school, 2 more want sites they can run themselves but lack technical skills.
You're running out of time to build, manage, and see all your clients' demands (the curse of the modernistic polymath!)… and and then you land a big business relationship with a company that already owns a agglomeration of domains and needs a cloud-based digital presence for a global web presence customized for each of the dissimilar regions they operate in.
Business is growing, there are so many things to manage, and it'due south all getting unwieldy.
Your hosting company is bully when information technology comes to shared hosting and VPS, merely are they also the best option when it comes to multisite hosting, dedicated managed hosting, deject hosting, etc.?
This is where understanding how to all-time manage domains and hosting for your WordPress sites tin can help y'all brand improve decisions.
Domains & Hosting or Domains vs Hosting?
As we've merely seen, the more WordPress sites y'all have to manage, the more complex things tin go when it comes to managing different domain and hosting scenarios, especially when you have into account the criteria below:
Organisation
Cost
Trust
Support
Control
Options
Security
Human being Error
Stability
Ownership
Organisation
Nowadays it's not uncommon for companies to own a portfolio of domains, even if they're just different variations of the same domain (e.g. .com, .internet, .org, .info, etc.) or trademarks to protect against competition or even cybersquatting.
Dissimilar types of sites and spider web projects have different hosting requirements, and some have more specialized or specific hosting needs than others.
Many WordPress developers not only manage a number of sites for clients, they too host exam sites across multiples servers and providers in order to test plugins, themes and scripts for compatibility.
Having your domains and hosting spread out across multiple providers can quickly become unwieldy. If we await at web services in the context of 'specialization of cognition' equally discussed earlier, it doesn't seem to make much sense to wait for 'one-stop' providers for domains and hosting, especially when different companies can provide amend tools to manage and organize your digital assets.
If yous go online and shop around, you can easily purchase a domain from whatever registrar offering the best price, transfer the domain to a provider offering a better domain management service, and host your WordPress sites with one or more hosting providers that offer the all-time solution for your clients' needs.
Take a domain management console like GoDaddy, for example…
GoDaddy provides domain management tools that let you lot manage all your domains from a single dashboard and key location. This includes options and settings like auto-renewals (so your domain registrations won't expire and you lot won't lose your domain), privacy and domain locking, domain transfers, configuring DNS settings, etc.
In this instance, you tin can purchase your domains from any registrar, transfer them to GoDaddy for consolidated ease of management, host your sites anywhere you like, and use their domain management console to easily manage hosting nameservers and DNS records.
Keeping all or most of your domains in one registrar makes managing things easier. Information technology also helps keep the development process more than organized. You don't need to navigate through unlike hosting providers, each with a unique setup, to switch back and along from viewing domains to hosting. Yous can keep a browser tab open for all your domains and some other for hosting and merely switch between browsers when working for maximum efficiency.
Cost
It used to be that you could get lower costs by coupling your domains with your hosting. Some providers nonetheless offer great deals if you lot buy both at the aforementioned time (for instance, get a gratuitous domain for your commencement year of registration).
Buying a domain name is actually not a big deal anymore. The boilerplate toll of registering and renewing a new domain is around US$ten to $15 a yr depending on the acme-level domain (TLD) and the registrar you choose.
As well, many hosting companies offer domains equally part of their service are really simply affiliates of domain registrars. Every bit mentioned earlier, you can shop around for domain prices and then transfer the domain to your preferred domain management service provider.
Here are some points to consider regarding the cost of buying domains:
- Different ways to buy domains – You can purchase domains through domain auctions, expired domain services, private offers, etc. so the cost tin vary depending on how you acquire the domain.
- Beware of deals that offer gratuitous domains when y'all purchase hosting – Often, the catch with these deals is that y'all need to buy hosting for at least one full yr in accelerate before y'all get your free domain. This can terminate upwardly raising the price of your 'gratis' domain. For example, if y'all decide to switch hosts within the prepaid year, it can be difficult to leave and take the domain with you lot, or get a refund for the unused time left on your hosting contract. Also, some hosts offer the first year free then heighten the price for your domain to higher renewal rates, or accuse college prices to brainstorm with in order to make up for initial losses. For an instance of such a case, check out 27 Reasons Why WordPress Crushes Squarespace Every Time.
- Lower costs by transferring domains – As already mentioned, nowadays you lot tin can easily purchase your domain from i registrar, then transfer information technology to another offering amend domain management and lower renewal fees.
Keeping your hosting separate from your domains also allows you to get the best hosting setup at the best cost. Additionally, some hosting decisions affected by cost may have little or nothing to do with domains. For example, WPMU DEV provides members with defended WordPress hosting every bit role of its membership service. This gives yous the ability to save money on domains and hosting.
We've written a comprehensive guide on WordPress hosting options to help you lot choose the best hosting setup for your WordPress site(south).
Trust
We not but alive in a world where specialization makes it harder to acquire much about anything in-depth, we likewise live in a world of myriad choices, options, and lots of marketing. Anyone, anywhere can publish information about their services and nosotros really have no fashion to define their trustworthiness before jumping in and getting committed.
Like many things, we can boil this all down to "heir-apparent beware."
When choosing hosting providers and domain registrars, it'south important to enquiry and do your due diligence. Equally well equally looking for unbiased reviews online to check the overall reputation of a service provider and how established they are in the industry, you can as well check things like how many websites are being hosted on a shared server past looking upwardly the IP accost of a website and and then using tools similar Opposite IP lookups (simply search online for "Reverse IP lookup" and selection a service).
Y'all can then contact a potential hosting provider, ask them questions, and compare their answers with your information.
Because trust is congenital over time, it can be hard to determine whether to cull a service provider or not. The new kid on the block may not exist effectually within the next yr or two, or they may have innovative methods and technologies that will render older and more than established competitors obsolete.
With many other types of services, you can lose your stock if the business responsible for managing it goes downwardly. With domains and hosting it's different. Information technology's pretty unusual for a domain registrar or hosting visitor to lose your domain records or website, fifty-fifty if they go out of business. Equally long as you take access to your backups (e.g. stored remotely), WordPress sites can be easily restored and domain records are kept past an independent arrangement called ICANN, and then you can always dispute ownership if annihilation happens.
Whether you lot decide to keep your domains and hosting separate or together, the main point here is to find and work with service providers you tin trust for your ain peace of mind.
Reliable Back up
Something to consider is that domains are regulated by an independent and non-for-profit organization (ICANN), whereas hosting isn't supervised or regulated.
Anyone can rent a server and become a hosting service provider. If something goes wrong with your site, the merely identify you can plow to is your host. If issues escalate and you want to switch hosting providers, all y'all can do is hope that they won't become difficult to deal with.
The same thing goes if you lot're a website owner and someone else is managing both your hosting and your domain proper noun.
Keeping your domain carve up from your hosting provider or managing agency reduces potential issues, considering it's one less trouble to bargain with if the relationship sours. If you purchase your domains from an ICANN accredited registrar and keep these managed separately, you shouldn't accept problems, as you can then hands point your domains to another host, or contact ICANN if there is whatsoever dispute.
Command
In the early on days, when the internet was similar the wild west of yonder days, many small web developers with questionable ethics would take advantage of their clients' lack of agreement of the web and annals domains for client sites under their own names as a course of security (the client would never know until they tried to leave). They would also look after their clients' hosting as many do today, and so the client was effectively 'locked-in' with their services and had little to no control over their own web presence.
Although it's pretty rare nowadays to come across this practise, the fact is that most website owners are non-technical minded users who still lack the understanding of how their digital presence works. Unless the client is educated, there is still the potential to continue website owners 'locked in'.
Whether you're a web developer looking afterwards many sites or a website possessor, information technology's important to exist very clear virtually who is in control of your domain and hosting and to be transparent with and communicate this to clients. Regardless of whether domains and hosting are held by the same provider or managed separately, having control of these assets, therefore, comes down to understanding domain registration and hosting service policies, service level agreements (SLA), customer service dispute escalation processes, and having access to records and logins for domain registrar and direction consoles and hosting accounts.
Having said this, keeping domains and hosting separate gives y'all more command, especially in situations where you lot outgrow your host, get disappointed with their customer service or support, or if at that place is some form of dispute where the provider threatens to suspend your service. If your domain is managed separately, yous can easily set a new hosting account somewhere else, alter your domain'southward nameservers and DNS settings to bespeak to a different server, migrate your site (or restore your site from a backup file), and be upwards and running again very apace.
One more thing to keep in heed is that some spider web hosting services don't host your electronic mail on the same service. Some managed WordPress hosting services, for case, require you to host your email separately. This means that you can either host your email with your domain provider and your website with your hosting company, or host your domain separately and ready different hosting accounts for your WordPress site and e-mail.
Assigning unlike hosting and electronic mail for your domain is done using different A-records and MX-records in your DNS settings.
More Options
Hyperspecialization and global competition or hypercompetition and global specialization?
It doesn't affair how yous say it, the fact is that domain and hosting providers (and just about all businesses, really) are trying to survive in a tough, crowded and highly competitive global market place.
Certain, low prices and high levels of service are very important. But beingness able to offer more options than everyone else is a fundamental differential. Especially if y'all can match competitors on price and quality of service.
With domain providers, for example, which would you choose if price and service were the aforementioned:
a) domain registration and renewals simply, or
b) domain registrations, renewals, and consolidations, the convenience of easy transfer processes, records management, privacy, and security features from ane central dashboard, ability to backorder registered domains, buy and sell through an sale and listing marketplace, one-click monetization of parked domains, etc.?
Leading domain registrars can offer many more than domain management options than hosting providers who simply offer the power to annals acme-level domains (TLDs).
The aforementioned affair goes for hosting providers. In that location is a difference between managed hosting and managed WordPress hosting. This divergence is not necessarily about offering more options in terms of more features or settings on a dashboard, merely providing clients with access to people with more than knowledge, expertise, and advice on means to better site operation and go ameliorate results using the WordPress platform.
Offering more than options, however, requires more than specialization, which involves hiring more than personnel, which ways looking at larger providers with access to greater resources.
With hosting, one way to see what kind of options are available for any site you plan to build, is to discover a site yous like that offers something similar to what you're looking for, and run its URL through a technology assay tool like BuiltWith.com…
When information technology comes to keeping domains and hosting divide or together based on 'more than options', then, you can pick providers who are dedicated to either domains or hosting, or go with a larger, vertically-integrated conglomerate. Your choice.
Security
According to reports on website hacking by Sucuri, there were 50 one thousand thousand sites in 2016 that were reported as phishing scams or distributing malware, which are both hallmarks of a hacked site. In 2018, the Sucuri squad analyzed over 25,000 CMS websites infected with malware and over 4 million files, to determine the main sources of security threats to CMS platforms like WordPress.
Since WordPress is the world's nigh pop CMS platform, it is besides the master target of hackers and malware. Unfortunately, spam and hacking are a existent problem and a reality. In fact, the Akismet plugin stops 7.v million pieces of spam per hour.
In theory, keeping your domain hosted with your site ways a hacker would demand fewer steps to gain command of your WordPress site, your hosting account and your domain records. The reality, however, is that most larger domain and hosting companies regularly amend their security measures and harden their security protocols to protect against cyber information breaches. In fact, security is often compromised by users themselves through poor security practices, such as not using strong passwords, using the same passwords for everything, or sharing passwords with others, not keeping software up-to-date, and a host of other factors.
With domain security, expect for domain direction features like:
- Auto-renew – Setting your domain to automatically renew registration prevents the domain from expiring and condign available for someone else to purchase.
- Domain registry or registrar locking – this prevents your domain settings from being modified by someone else without your noesis or permission.
- Domain privacy – this lets you hide your personal contact information from public view and prevent thieves from accessing and using this information to impersonate you lot or fool you into accessing your domain.
With hosting, there are many security features to consider – everything from hardening servers with firewalls, to software, scripts, and applications, passwords, performing secure WordPress installations, and even your own security practices.
Some additional points:
- There are services that let you to monitor the registration status of your domains. These services warning you lot via email when monitored domains are nearing expiration and when they change status. This lets you keep an eye on your domains (or anyone else'south).
- In that location are also services that let you lot monitor your domain for potential subdomain takeovers (subdomains pointing to 3rd party services that are no longer existence used, which get bought and/or hijacked by malicious hackers.)
- Some security features similar SSL (for HTTPS) tin can be obtained from domain or hosting providers, or even SSL resellers.
See our ultimate guide to WordPress security for more than details and brand sure to complete our WordPress security checklist.
Human Mistake
No doubt you're familiar with Murphy'south law ("Anything that can go wrong will go incorrect.") Fifty-fifty though Potato's Police force predates the internet, information technology as well describes it perfectly.
To err is human and "pobody'south nerfect."
Have it. Things tin can and will go wrong and the more you cluster things together, the more chances you have of experiencing a clusterfubar.
While information technology may seem more convenient to combine hosting and domains under one roof, it has its pitfalls. For example, if everything'due south tied together and your credit bill of fare expires or you lot forget to renew your domain and you're not alerted, you could lose both. Your domain could expire and exist auctioned off to someone else who then flips information technology to someone else later for a quick profit. Classic clusterfubar.
Unless you ain a trademark attached to your domain, if you lose your domain, it tin toll you a lot more to get information technology back.
And don't disbelieve administrative errors. Sometimes, just typing i wrong letter when setting up a domain or hosting account can create a whole lot of headaches.
So, whether you lot choose to go on your domain and hosting together or manage both separately, merely retrieve that when information technology comes to human being error, Tater'due south no furphy!
Stability
It's possible that your site or host could experience outages. If your domain is hosted separately, you could temporarily redirect your domain to a backup site or maintenance mode page hosted elsewhere to minimize the downtime your visitors will experience.
While you could redirect your domain even if it'south registered with your hosting visitor, it doesn't help if your entire hosting company experiences an outage and you can't admission your business relationship at all.
If y'all're but starting out and need to continue your costs as low as possible, ane way to monitor whether your existing hosting service is stable or not is to sign up for a free domain monitoring service
Once once again, this supports the argument for keeping domains and hosting separate. This allows you to host of import sites with more reliable and stable hosting providers, or choose options that offering higher uptime guarantees, server monitoring, redundancy, automated backups and responsive 24/7 support.
Ownership
Specialization and competition likewise leads to diversification. Individuals and businesses of all sizes invest into registering domain portfolios equally a way of securing digital assets to safeguard their brand, protect futurity business ideas, and even give them boosted options or sources of income. In response to this need, many domain providers now offering a range of new services to facilitate the buying, selling, and managing of domain portfolios.
Other than offering things like monetized domain parking, these domain services have niggling to practise with hosting, but they are important when it comes to buying and acquisition of digital assets. They as well require people with different skill sets and areas of expertise to manage and suggest clients.
Many hosting companies, on the other hand, don't really care about things similar owning domain portfolios or providing these kinds of services. Their master focus is leasing and maintaining servers and making sure that websites stay up and running. As mentioned earlier, some hosting companies will fifty-fifty offering free domains when you lot purchase their hosting package every bit an incentive to lock y'all into longer services contracts.
While in that location is nothing wrong with offer gratuitous incentives, brand sure to always read the fine impress before purchasing any web services and go along all records of domain and hosting registrations and renewals, business relationship, login, and admission details, and invoices and receipts for all purchases as proof of ownership.
Although it's not equally common every bit it used to be, it's actually important to bank check who owns what, especially with domain names. Depending on the terms of service you sign, your free domain could cease upward under the command of the hosting provider (e.g. they may take a clause where they automatically go on your domain if you cancel your hosting plan). Some may besides register themselves as the owner of the domain, making you an administrator only with restricted access.
Claiming buying of a domain that'southward been registered to someone else is a much tougher battler to fight than trying to access a website that's been taken over by hackers or even by your own hosting visitor for lack of payment. As long as you can access your domain records, all y'all need to practice to get your site back is accept a fill-in of your site files.
As mentioned before, something you can practice to protect your ownership is check that your domain or hosting provider offers domain privacy then your identifiable information isn't published in the WHOIS database and available for public perusal.
In fact, to check whether you are indeed the registered owner of your domain, just run a WHOIS check on your domain name (although this is getting harder to practice as more owners are opting for domain privacy).
One concluding thing to keep in mind is that with hosting, you're only leasing server infinite and there is no domain buying either, you're just leasing your domain from ICANN. Finish paying your hosting and domain renewal fees and you volition quickly detect out who really owns your services.
In Conclusive…
Equally digital needs of businesses evolve, domain and hosting providers must continue to adapt and provide new specialized services to remain competitive. This specialization makes it harder for smaller providers to offer 'one-stop' services, as these require more resources to support all the features and specific needs that businesses demand.
If y'all are a web developer or agency offering clients domain and hosting services, the good news is that you lot tin pick and cull the options and services that will best suit your business model and your clients' needs. Virtually domain and hosting providers offer management tools, dashboards, and fifty-fifty affiliate programs that will simplify your life and brand running your business a whole lot easier and more assisting.
If you lot are a website possessor just starting out, or building an online presence on a shoestring budget, it's still a good idea to go along your domains and hosting carve up, equally yous tin can save a lot of hassle managing assets as your website or business organization grows.
Of course, if bundling your domain and hosting together makes more sense for your business organization or website project, then by all means consider information technology. In the end, information technology all comes downwardly to your needs and preferences. The goal of this mail is simply to provide you with useful insights to help you amend plan your spider web presence or digital business concern. We hope the higher up information has helped.
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Source: https://wpmudev.com/blog/keep-domains-wordpress-separate/
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