# recommendations for sites to register a domain and hosting?



## GerryDavid (Oct 16, 2012)

I have my current website through smugmug but since they raised their prices I have to find an alternative for next year, plus I want to register a new domain for a new venture of my business.

I normally use godaddy for the domain but they no seem to charge for email addreses on top of the domain fee, and ive heard lots of bad pr about them lately and none of the coupons seem to be working currently so I am hoping to get some advice on a great registrar and a great and cheap host!

I am currently thinking of using hostgator.com for the hosting, its pretty cheap each month for unlimited bandwidth and storage and I think ive heard good things about them in the past but im not sure.

Any tips or recommendations?  Money is a issue.


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## ColeGauthier (Oct 16, 2012)

Check out in motion hosting, I like them very much and is fairly inexpensive


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## Mully (Oct 16, 2012)

I like Blue Host .... I have several non profits with them and never any problems ...they also offer Word Press to build your site


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## MLeeK (Oct 16, 2012)

I use PortfolioSitez for my website. One I purchased at GoDaddy and one at 1 and 1.


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## Big Mike (Oct 16, 2012)

I switched to Hostgator about 3-4 years ago, after several recommendations.  I've been very pleased with them and highly recommend them.


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## mjhoward (Oct 16, 2012)

I use Arvixe.  It was $67 for 2 yrs unlimited data transfer, disk space, and email and comes with free domain name for life.


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## GerryDavid (Oct 16, 2012)

That deal for arvixe seems a bit to good?  Most hosts charge $60 a year for hosting and then the domain is $15 a year through godaddy.  whats the catch?   so far they are winning.


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## GerryDavid (Oct 16, 2012)

mjhoward said:


> I use Arvixe.  It was $67 for 2 yrs unlimited data transfer, disk space, and email and comes with free domain name for life.



I looked up one review site and the reviews look horrible.  One says there is downtime each day?

Arvixe Review - web hosting reviews by real users


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## PhotoWhoa (Oct 17, 2012)

What about something like ZenFolio or 500px?


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## ghache (Oct 17, 2012)

I recently discovered squarespace Guillaume Hache Photography - Ottawa / Gatineau Photographer. 


www.squarespace.com


More of a content management system like wix but WAY better. i still use 500px as a hosting site and used it for a while as a online portfolio but squarespace is alot more usefull and the flexibility it has and the overall system makes it a better platform to work with.


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## GerryDavid (Oct 17, 2012)

I like the idea of square, hosting and design all in one place, but they charge more for less, 75% more a month for limited bandwidth and storage than hostgator.  there are lots of free templates online I think *been told havent searched* so Ill probably have to keep looking.

I did look up Arvixe, can you confirm that its not down each day?  And how did you get it for $60 for 2 years?  It looks to be that for 1 year.  And do you loose the domain when you switch hosts?

I want to move away from a picture host type host since they dont generally let you create custom layouts and pages with out charging a ton for it.  I think 500px and zenfolio are also like that?  I do all my pic viewing in person since online sales have sucked in the past, so the main pics on the page will be for portfolio purposes.


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## GerryDavid (Oct 17, 2012)

Has anyone tried google sites?  I just discovered they offer hosting.


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## kathybrotherton (Oct 18, 2012)

I use Godaddy - I havent had an issue with them so far..... they have been fairly quick in replying to my support ticket when it was an error I created lol.


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## sandraadamson (Oct 18, 2012)

I have my website with hostmonster they give you one free domain and it's about $120 a year Canadian probably cheaper for Americans as they are a US company. I used to pay $20 a year for my domain through go and had hostmonster hosting my site. But realized that transferring my domain name to them eliminated that $20 go daddy charge. Been with them 6 years very happy.

www.sandraadamson.com www.sandraadamson.blogspot.com


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## Chris R (Oct 18, 2012)

I gotta say Hostgator is pretty nice. I run a fairly popular vBulletin forum that consumes over 50GB of bandwidth per month, takes up 11GB of disk space, and runs some fairly CPU intensive scripts. This all runs off of Hostgator's "baby" plan and they have never complained.  I ran the same site off Bluehost and they'd constantly suspend my account claiming that it was too labor intensive for their servers.

A lot of people can't believe I only spend $9 a month to host such a site...


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## GerryDavid (Oct 18, 2012)

Chris, I think the package details say you have to get the 3rd package for your domain name to show constantly in the address bar?  I forget what this is called.  did I misunderstand hostgators details?  or are you able to keep your domain up on your site with the baby plan?


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## Chris R (Oct 18, 2012)

GerryDavid said:


> Chris, I think the package details say you have to get the 3rd package for your domain name to show constantly in the address bar?  I forget what this is called.  did I misunderstand hostgators details?  or are you able to keep your domain up on your site with the baby plan?



Where do you read that at? You don't get a "dedicated IP" but your domain functions just like any other site does. I believe the only real advantage of having a dedicated IP is that you can use services such as SSL.


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## GerryDavid (Oct 18, 2012)

thats what I read and misunderstood.  was thinking dedicated ip means the domain.


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## 12sndsgood (Oct 18, 2012)

Chris R said:


> GerryDavid said:
> 
> 
> > Chris, I think the package details say you have to get the 3rd package for your domain name to show constantly in the address bar? I forget what this is called. did I misunderstand hostgators details? or are you able to keep your domain up on your site with the baby plan?
> ...





sounds similar to zenfolio. where if you have a lower tiered package, the zenfolio name still appears. but when you upgrade to the higher package there name dissapears and it makes it look like its your own site and not piggybacked off of zenfolio.


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## mjhoward (Oct 19, 2012)

GerryDavid said:


> mjhoward said:
> 
> 
> > I use Arvixe.  It was $67 for 2 yrs unlimited data transfer, disk space, and email and comes with free domain name for life.
> ...



I've been using them for the past 2 years now with 3 websites and have never had a problem with them.  I've also never had any downtime with them either.  There have been rare times where I've gotten slower response on one of the sites, but those times are rare.  If they become frequent, you simply ask them to host you on a different server and they'll move your site to a different server that receives less traffic.  I suspect that most of the people writing poor reviews from them immediately took to the 'review' sites before even trying to remedy the problem.  Their customer support has also been helpful when I was trying to migrate an existing pgsql database over to them.  They had responded to and resolved my problem within 24 hrs.  Unless you are getting tens of thousands of hits a day, you won't have any problems.  If you get that kind of traffic, they also offer dedicated servers at a higher cost.


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## mjhoward (Oct 19, 2012)

Chris R said:


> I believe the only real advantage of having a dedicated IP is that you can use services such as SSL.



That AND it means you're the only site drawing bandwidth from that IP address.  If you have to share an IP address/Server with other domains, then your bandwidth could suffer if the server is also hosting high traffic websites.  If many websites that are hosted by that machine are also using a lot of server side scripting, then processing power and resources can also become limited for you.


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## GerryDavid (Jan 9, 2014)

That was a while back.    I got a good deal on hostgator and I created my own site using notepad.  they have a great sale on black friday - 50% off.  I do need to find an online ordering site though for reorders, im not going to pay a company hundreds for the ability to order pictures through them, if any they should be paying me for the business but thats not how it works


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## flightless_beaker (Jan 9, 2014)

GerryDavid said:


> I normally use godaddy for the domain but they no seem to charge for email addreses on top of the domain fee, and ive heard lots of bad pr about them lately and none of the coupons seem to be working currently so I am hoping to get some advice on a great registrar and a great and cheap host!
> 
> I am currently thinking of using hostgator.com for the hosting, its pretty cheap each month for unlimited bandwidth and storage and I think ive heard good things about them in the past but im not sure.



I have my domain name for my photography website through Go Daddy. To just register a domain and to use a different hosting, it works fine. I use Wix for my photo website and I don't really have any complaints. Its great for people like me who don't know diddly about web design. Though I've heard of others here that use better services so I very well may migrate (since I'm about to do a redesign with my girlfriend who works in the general field). 

Now hosting with Go Daddy is a nightmare. I run a gaming forum and Go Daddy is nothing but a hastle. The guy I took the site over from used Host Gator and he loved it and recommended it to me though since I used Go Daddy with my photo site I didn't listen because I wanted to keep everything together. Regretted it ever since. The file manager is a mess. Sometimes it doesn't even pop up half the time with my files. If you need to put a big file in a database (like an SQL file), forget about it. You have to spend lots of time Googling work arounds. It signs you out automatically after I think its 10 minutes so if you are doing something on it for a while, you have to constantly sign back in. Then the website builder is a joke. I've seen photographers who have used it (when scoping out my local competition) and they just don't look very good as compared to other web builders other people here have recommended. Though I don't have personal experience, most people who use Host Gator like it and I may start thinking about migrating all my web ventures there.


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## GerryDavid (Jan 9, 2014)

flightless_beaker said:


> GerryDavid said:
> 
> 
> > I normally use godaddy for the domain but they no seem to charge for email addreses on top of the domain fee, and ive heard lots of bad pr about them lately and none of the coupons seem to be working currently so I am hoping to get some advice on a great registrar and a great and cheap host!
> ...



There is some company that goes around buying smaller hosting companies, host gator is part of this.  Ive heard of some complaints but my site is fairly small so I havent had problems yet that I am aware of.


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