Warning: Free Hosting What’s Behind This Term.
Few clients who are not familiar with this term misinterpret it. In most cases, such a name hides major problems.
I have many clients and almost every week someone comes to me who has lost access to their website files and domain (shudder!) in one day!
How is that possible?
When we’re looking for “free hosting service”, we should ask the company we’re turning to this basic question (usually the company building our website).
* Do I become the sole owner of the hosting and domain?
In short, it’s about whether the hosting and domain will be registered under our company. A website is not the same as a domain!
Unfortunately, my long-term experience shows that companies building websites for us often offer “free” hosting and “free” domains. Everything looks great until we start discussing additional service fees (usually positioning or service management). There’s no problem at first when we’re paying, but problems arise when the company demands too much and we don’t want to pay anymore. Without ownership of the domain and hosting, we lose them in one day along with the domain, which is put up for sale or the company providing us services starts blackmailing us.
Last week a client came to me who lost his domain (which was actually the name of his company) and his website itself because everything was registered under the company providing him services. A dispute ensued, and in that moment the client wanted to cancel. However, Company X put their domain up for sale and cut off access to our website.
I also offer a “free” hosting service for the first year along with a free domain, but my offer is 100% transparent. I register both services under the client’s company data (paying only for an annual subscription from our account), and after registration and completing the website, we transfer all access rights to the client. Unfortunately, on our market there are many companies that secure themselves against the possibility of a client leaving or not being able to negotiate higher rates by registering everything under their own name without the client’s knowledge. As a result, clients invest time and money in promoting their domains in various media, building prestige in Google, only to lose it all when the company takes it away.
That’s why I urge all of you who are looking for domain/hosting services to clearly establish with companies that will act as intermediaries what rules apply. You should be the sole owner of both domain and hosting. If there’s a problem with hosting, it’s not so bad because you can just redirect your domain to a new IP, upload files and databases to a new hosting, and then fix the issue. However, losing ownership of a domain is a major problem. The domain functions in many places on the internet, attracting hundreds of visitors per day. You lose everything when someone takes away your right to use it.
Remember that you should always register both your domain and hosting under your company data. If you’re unable to do this yourself, give us a call at 506 130 673 and we’ll do it for free. We will register everything under your company, and then provide you with all access rights to both services. We recommend changing passwords as soon as you get access to them, regardless of whether you’re using the services from Company X or Y.
Also remember to provide up-to-date information in registration forms (email address and phone number), because these will be used for notifications about expiring services. If you don’t respond on time (e.g., with a domain – it may be lost forever because the registrar will release it into the general pool after some time, and anyone can buy it). There are thousands of people involved in “hunting” old domains that still have links and generate traffic. A moment of inattention can cost you your domain, so it’s worth paying a lot of attention to updating information in your domain panel and remembering to renew your domain.
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