Do You Have Access To Your Domain and Web Hosting Accounts? If Not, You Could Face Possible Issues in Reclaiming Rights to Your Website and Domain from the Designer Company Who Created and Registered It
New, and even experienced business owners have come to understand the importance of having a website in today’s market; as it is one of the main ways to stay competitive and provide your business any chance of survival.
Essentially, if you are not online, you don’t exist.
Due to this tidbit of knowledge, many business owners feel a sense of urgency of putting up a basic landing page with their information so they have something to direct prospects to. This, mixed with a limited start-up budget which many small business owners are faced with, produces a lackluster and unprofessional looking first impression of a website.
This mentality of “put something up for the sake of having something”, is the first costly mistake that many business owners take on. Your website should be looked at as an investment right from the beginning and not as another cost. Remember, this is where you will lead all of your prospects to and generate leads from; so establish a digital footprint that will make them leave with a professional and sophisticated impression of you and nothing less.
You May Also Like: “Warning! Why Cheap Website Builders Cost You More In The Long Run”But before you begin considering design or evening hiring a webmaster, you must first take care of two important things: purchase your own domain and web host.
Be The Owner of Everything That Relates To Your Business
This begins with your domain and web host. You will notice when you commence shopping around for web designers many will always ask you two of the following questions:
- Do you have a domain?
- Do you have web hosting?
Most first-time business owners will say no to both. When this is the case, one of three things will follow.
The best scenario (which is the route we take here at Clicc Media), is to assist the business owner in registering and purchasing their domain and web host accounts under their own credit card and personal information, then have them provide us with the logins so we can begin the project.
The alternative routes are when the webmaster offers to purchase and register both the domain and web hosting account for you and uses their credentials, or they offer domain and web hosting as an add-on to their services and will usually bundle this into your total design price.
We’re going to dig in a little further into these two and clearly explain the downside.
They Are Now The Owners of Your Website and Not You
Yup, you read the headline correctly. By allowing the webmaster to purchase and register your domain and web hosting for you, you are now running the risk of them being able to keep this information and holding you “hostage” to their services.
This means that if you ever wish to move away from their services, you might have issues in attaining the rights to both accounts.
- If the webmaster is kind enough, which many are, they may agree to just transfer the domain to your own account and assist in transferring your website to your new web host.
- But there are times where a company will maintain rights to the domain and web host, meaning you might have to start all over from the beginning and lose any and all online marketing efforts made for that website.
- Not only this, but you may have also lost a branded domain name.
So What Can You Do to Avoid This?
- Purchase and register your own domain name and web hosting account, or
- If you decide to have a web design company assist you in this, make sure they guide you through the process but still register the accounts under your own name and credit card. Once this step is completed, you can then provide them the login credentials when necessary.
- This also allows you to control the passwords and block access to anyone as needed.
- Also, do not sign up for their web hosting services, if they offer any – just use a top of the line provider of your preference.
- Pro tip: Before you begin working with a web design company, make sure that you will be the full owner of the website once design is done. This include all content, images and analytics.
Our Recommendations for Best Domain and Web Hosting
We are always asked for our web hosting or domain hosting recommendations, and our answer is always the same.
For domain hosting we recommend GoDaddy. They are a household name when it comes to domains hosting, they offer more top-level-domain options and are just better stewards for the registration of the domain but the NS servers themselves. It is better to keep your domains and web hosting separate, this way you can just keep all of your domains under one account – especially a trusted account.
For web hosting our go-to is SiteGround especially if you are going to create a WordPress website; not only are they incredibly affordable but they have an amazing support team. Their tech team is truly one of the best, any time we have had an issue or just a questions, they have been able to resolve it either right there and then or within a 24 hour period period. Trust us when we say no two web hosting companies are created equally (Network Solutions, we’re talking to you).
In Conclusion
We now know that before you begin your journey on finding a web design company you should first take care of purchasing and registering your domain and web hosting. Make sure to keep all of your business logins in one safe place for easy access, this way if you ever need to update any passwords you can keep record of it instead of trying to think back in memory.
Should you have any questions regarding any of the points above please leave a comment below, or if you would like to learn more about web design services fill out our contact form or call us directly today!
