When you start a new business, it is always a good idea to purchase a domain name to secure your business’s digital identity.
A domain name is also valuable for the authenticity of your company, it lends you much needed credibility online. There are many free email platforms to choose from (Gmail & Outlook) but they lack the professionalism you should be seeking when starting a new company. Let’s have a look at some of the reasons you should purchase Email Hosting and your own Domain Name...
Your Company becomes easier to find online
This is where your Domain name is most useful. This is usually the first step in building your website because it’s like establishing your website’s street address on the internet. If you didn’t have a domain name you would be giving out your IP address to Clients who wanted to view your website which can be laborious and easily forgotten. It’s also recommended to keep your website address as short and concise as you can. These are more memorable therefore easier for the client to remember.
It looks more Legitimate and lends Credibility
Let’s be honest here, more often than not, you find yourself judging a company on whether they use their own domain name or if they are using Gmail/Yahoo email. Gmail and Yahoo are perfectly fine for personal use, but they can come off as very unprofessional if you are using them for business purposes. Customers expect a website domain name and email to match. When they don’t, this may raise some unnecessary questions…can this business be trusted? Are they too cheap to buy their own domain email address? This kind of questioning can lead to you hurting the first impression you are trying to make. As we all know…first impressions can be lasting. With free email accounts, there is also the added risk that you are tying your image to a third-party over whom you have zero control. Another downside is that most emails sent from a free email address will likely land up in a Trash/Spam folder.
It’s better and easier to have both under one roof
In the past, if users had a different domain registrar than their website hosting provider, even if their bills went unpaid, they could easily forward their domain to a new site or sign up to a new website hosting company. However, even when doing this, massive errors may still occur. For example… back in 2017 a huge company called Marketo.com forgot to renew their domain name at Network Solutions. Their entire website disappeared from the internet overnight, while millions of customers emails and links ceased to work, and chaos ensued. Luckily enough, a customer of Marketo.com voluntarily renewed the domain name that had expired for them, even using his own credit card to do it. He sent them the invoice and the site soon returned to normal.
Present day, there are multiple reasons as to why the client should be keeping their website hosting and domain registration all under one roof – and not just to avoid Marketo’s massive error. Here are some of those reasons:
- One Account -You now have the ability to manage several websites and domains all under one account. As a matter of fact, most providers today offer really good packages that group domain registration with web hosting. It’s a smart move to make.
- Good Price - Since many providers offer some great package prices it’s safe to assume you could save hundreds of Rands a year if for e.g. you manage several websites then it would make sense to bundle two services together instead
- Easily upgrade to Website hosting -Over time most companies will want to expand their presence on the internet. If you keep your domains close to a quality hosting plan, this is always a sound business strategy. It’s always easier to expand and upgrade your business when everything is under the same umbrella. It just makes sense and seeing the overall bigger picture much easier.
Speaking of a quality hosting plan…Please check out our Email Hosting Plans here - https://www.hostify.co.za/email-hosting.php