Do you want an email address with your order?
Purchasing a domain name is cheap, setting up hosting is cheap, installing WordPress is FREE but if you’re not technically savvy and you’re trying to do your own digital marketing then it’s Crazy what you need to pay for.
I’ve been working with Aussie and US hosting companies for over 10 years and there is a LOT of competition so these hosting companies tend to focus on the monthly price. Most business owners didn’t understand the value of their hosting several years ago and just went with the cheapest option but here are a couple reasons I recommend you spend a little extra..
Basic things every website needs
There are some basic things you need when you are creating a brand new website and I went through a learning curve with CrazyDomains just recently for Neville, a refrigeration and air conditioning installer in the Central Coast of NSW. Those simple things are:
- SSL certificate (otherwise Google Search won’t like your website)
- Email (so you can send messages from your domain – ie [email protected])
- Domain name DNS (the nerdy technical part)
CrazyDomains have some cheap hosting and domain registrations and I use them for some of our international domain names but I’ve only recently explored them for hosting and I experienced some issues that all customers should know. You can see one of them in this digital marketing training video I recorded below.
CrazyDomains charges for email addresses
When you provide cheap website hosting yet have technical support staff available to help 24 hours a day you need to make up this cost somehow and Crazy Domains do it by charging a little extra for things that most US companies do for free. Remember that most of these costs are an annual fee and $20 here and there ads up. Crazy charge extra to have the SSL certificate and to have a simple email account so we decided to get Neville’s business onto Google G Suite.
The problem with Crazy Domains when you want to use Google’s G Suite is that you need to make changes to the domain DNS settings and Crazy Domains charge you for that too! Overall the costs are not that high and there is always someone available to help you (even though one experience I had took 40 minutes when it should have taken 4 minutes).
Managing your digital marketing is technical
Digital Marketing is important to EVERY business these days. Most of your competitors are promoting themselves online and most of your customers are exploring you via your website and social media profiles.
At the same time it’s not worth paying someone a full time salary to manage it for you so most businesses use directory services like Yellow Pages, HiPages or LocalSearch or an agency like virion. The reason I don’t like Directory Services is that their main goal is to ensure that THEY get discovered first and that YOU get discovered because you are listed on their website.
You’re paying Yellow Pages and LocalSearch to ensure that YOU rely on THEM! And they do it at a price that is attractive (ie. cheap). Doesn’t make sense to me.
The other thing these companies offer is that they’ll make all the changes to your website for you. Yes, nice to know, but many of the tasks you’d do every day can be done very simply if you are using WordPress to create and edit your site.
For $25 per week you can have all the training you need to manage most of the daily and monthly digital marketing tasks yourself.
Learn about our COMPLETE Digital Marketing Training Course and Support package.
