I wanted to start my own website but there are so many options! I just want something cheap to get me started, so just domain registration. Can anyone recommend a company? How easy is it for a semi-computer literate person to start a site on the cheap? I am willing to put in my own time to learn, build and manage the site I just don't have a big budget for this project ($100 at the moment.)
I useLog In. I posted this yesterday;Log In as it's the cheapest place to get domains with free WHOIS. It's $8.99 for a .com and if you use the code it's $7.99. Why I don't use the cheap 99 cent deals is because unless you pay for WHOIS your email details etc aren't kept private. Plus, when it comes to renewal many do auto renewal at a higher price. I use free hosting at the moment so I can build content on my site. I useLog In as it's free and they always offer coupons, so you upgrade or export the website to another host. That's what I have done, because it takes time to build a site, change the theme and add social media to it.
Check out this plan:Log In It will give you 2GB of storage and 200GB of bandwidth plus a free domain for only $9 for the first year($20 the next year). It is a perfect plan to get started with the limited budget. Fatcow has been around for many years now. I suggest you buy the hosting and domain together since it will give you better value for your money.
You can make a website for free at weebly.com. I have several of them. No reason to pay big money. It is easy to understand how to do it.
I recommend you go forLog In. They're very reliable and whenever I had a problem, they would usually respond to the inquiry in a maximum of 15 minutes! Now that's what I call prompt support. Just be prepared to disclose some personal information about you in the worst case scenario. You must give out your ID card in order to prevent potential fraud. Everyone can confirm that this is routine for many domain registrars.
My favourite way of picking up a domain is via GoDaddy's domain auction. I have picked up some great names for very cheap prices (about $5 for the first year – perfect for projects I'm not too sure about) and plenty of .com ones. I've never bought a web site so I can't help there.
Personally I would keep the host and domain provider separate. Some offer it free as long as you host with them, so it makes t harder to keep the domain if you want to switch. Not impossible, but they won't make it easy. Also the renewal maybe higher with a host and as many domain companies offer free WHOIS or discounts for multiple years, you could save more that way. For example GoDaddy charges $8 for WHOIS, Namecheap $3 and Namesilo is free and that is in addition to the cost of the domain. Another company may offer a better price if you buy a domain for a few years. I ended up buying a .info for 2 years for $4.
I think this is the best deal that I've seen so far. I get my domains from Humdomains for around $9 and that's all I get. I pay around $50 a year for hosting (different company). So this $9/1st year and $20 for next year is really a bargain. I bookmarked the site and seriously considering it for my next online project. Thanks for sharing.
$100 is more than enough to get a website registered, hosted, and online. You'll want to go through a registration site like NameCheap or DynaDot and then find hosting with C-Panel. In fact, $100 could tackle your domain and hosting costs for an entire year, if you're willing to settle for a website design that's from a generic template. You have plenty of options.
It depends on what kind of domain you want to buy. If you want to buy a TLD (top level domain) like .com, .net, .org, then you've to spend around $8 to get a keyword optimized, brand new domain. As you are willing to learn, if you can host the site on GoogleApps, you can save big on hosting and bandwidth costs. If you want to host a blog you can do so on blogger(acquired by google) for free. Plenty of blogger templates are available for free or you can design one from the ground up. In any case, you don't have to shell out $100.
Since @ OP is just starting out why shouldn't he take advantage of free hosting? There are lots of sites where you can get your site hosted free. Log In Log In Log In All you'd need to spend is the $10 or less on a domain name. Once you are quite certain that you want to spend some money to get more reliable hosting then take that step, go for the cheapest but most reliable hosting.
In my opinion Namecheap is one of the best ones to buy from as they are very fairly priced and also they have regular promos that give you significant discounts so it's best to just wait or look for those coupons as soon as they come around. The main times they release these coupons are during shopping holidays like Black Friday or cyber Monday, but they also release these promos a few times in between those as well. I wouldn't recommend godaddy because they have bad customer service and they even supported the SOPA bill which was proposing internet censorship so I find them questionable.
This is all great stuff! Thank you everyone. Please keep the information coming, been researching each option as you talk about them. I love the idea of free hosting, but what are the drawbacks? How are these companies that host for free making their money? Am I going to lose out on anything if I go with a free hoster? What do you guys and gals think about wordpress?
I use free hosting and there are some poor hosts (where the servers are less reliable) and ones that are fine, but have restrictions. For example if you have lots of images it will take a long to to load. You could do what I did and have a free wordpress.com site and then once you are ready you can export it over to a hosted wordpress.org site, so you can set it up and play around with content and layout and then add it to a domain of your own.
Interesting points you've all exposed here. Though I really don't see why one wouldn't want to spend a bargain of $5 on some great hosting than not paying anything and have the worst services you've ever had the eyes to witness. You can't do any business with that, but it's just my $0.02
Free doesn't necessarily mean bad. There many paid hosts whose services are horrible. Take 1&1 and an example. You pay for the hosting but what do you get? How do they make money? Some charge $0 for hosting but should need any help then you'd have to pay for support. There's also the hope that you could pay for an upgrade [for better hosting]. Others will have you buy a domain name through them and make some money off that. So there are numerous ways they can make money. As for you data getting lost, I think if you back it up, you needn't be worried about losing any of it.
