Has anyone here used hostmate for webpage / wordpress / email hosting before?
They seem quite cheap and are based in AU. I can't find many reviews etc on them, which makes me think they're a very small entity. I'm looking to set up a small business soon so am looking for options.
Good advice there, I'd been thinking about the contingency scenarios also.. My business will be design services so the website will be quite simple, with just some images, about-me stuff, and contact info. The email is more important and I'll need to rely on it to be working and secure. The website could be down for a week and it woudn't bother me, but the email needs to be up.
So maybe I look at separate email and web hosting then. I've seen Zoho mentioned quite a bit on OzB, with good reviews. Another friend said to just use AWS (Amazon). There's just so many options out there…
Can it work to have my domain point to a website hosted by say hostinger or hastpapa (eg, www.mybusiness.com.au ), and email ([email protected]) hosted by Zoho or another provider? Can they be done separately with the same domain?
Can it work to have my domain point to a website hosted by say hostinger or hastpapa (eg, www.mybusiness.com.au ), and email ([email protected]) hosted by Zoho or another provider? Can they be done separately with the same domain?
Of course. In the domain DNS settings the mail settings are entirely different to the settings that direct the visitor to wherever your website is. Zoho will tell you exactly what records you need to enter into your DNS. And wherever you host your website will probably also tell you what settings to add if you go with a user friendly option. There's plenty of options for free static website hosting and you can convert your Wordpress site to static HTML for free too. But if you want to be able to easily edit your website whenever you want you probably will just want to stick with Wordpress rather than having to redeploy every time you notice a spelling mistake you want to fix. I can't remember if Zoho does it automatically, but you'll want to set up a wildcard catch-all for your email so [email protected] ends up in your inbox, so then you don't need to worry too much about people spelling your name properly.
Also monitor your website uptime for free with uptimerobot.com
Good idea re the catch-all emails.
Does it matter where I purchase a domain name from then? I'm thinking of getting a Zoho account for email, then purchasing the domain and some cheap/basic site hosting from Hostmate (willing to give a local small business a shot - hopefully they don't go bust or disappear..)
I found some reviews on the here - https://www.websiteplanet.com/web-hosting/hostmate/
Seems positive. I've seen a couple of sites that they host also and they load nice and quick.
Have been looking at AWS but they have about a thousand products, none of which seem to specifically treat my situation.
@axloz: I will say that namecheap for australian domains is a bad idea, their backend provider or whatever for australian domains is BORKED with their policies. VentraIP comes highly regarded and I keep my Australian domains there, I don't use any of their other services like hosting though, domain and DNS only. Steer well clear of Netregistry. I've never heard of hostmate so I couldn't say. My Australian websites are usually either in Singapore or on a CDN. Amazon is a great option but you'll have more of a learning curve getting it going.
@AustriaBargain: Good to know re Namecheap and AU domains, cheers!
I'm now leaning towards using AWS for everything other than email, which I'll use Zoho for. The AWS Workmail is too much for my needs and costs $4USD/month vs $1.65AUD for Zoho.
I'm simply amazed at how saturated the marketplace is for hosting services..
@axloz: Something I’ve recently found interesting is designing in Wordpress, exporting the whole site as static HTML with a one click plugin, and then dragging and dropping that output to a static host, you get the benefits of Wordpress visual designers but the security and speed of static website. You can host static websites for free on GitHub or Netlify or even Amazon. And people are making all these tools for free, it’s amazing.
@AustriaBargain: Wordpess will be the platform I'm going to use. My site will be very basic at first so my learning curve will focus on manipulating the platform, rather than curating my content. Once my business gets rolling I'll probably add an instagram feed to it though, so that'll be v1.1.
I've tried Squarespace, Wix, and Weebly - all of which I could easily use myself and run with, but I don't feel their outputs were all that flash to be honest. Good, but not polished/professional.. Plus learning WP will be a new challenge for me.
@axloz: Have a look at visual builders for WP like Elementor. And don't be afraid to learn bits of code as you go, CSS, code snippets, little things for little jobs as they come up. All In One WP Migration will let you do one click backups and migrations. And don't want to lead you down a dark path, but most WP plugins are actually GPL, you pay for the support and automatic updates, you don't pay for the plugin itself because it's GPL in the first place, you aren't obliged to pay.
I'd not use cpanel or any of your own hosting options for email. Email hosting providers will just give you a cpanel email anyway, but at least they are liable for securing it on the back end. I also wouldn't use the WP/PHP mail functions to send transactional mail straight from your webserver either, if you plan on selling things on your site. Zoho will do webmail and with the Zoho smartphone mail app for free, why bother doing it yourself? If your web server goes down then your email goes down. If your server is hacked then your email could be vulnerable too.
How much interactivity do you need on your site, you can host a simple site for free if you like.