Website, Hosting, Mail and Domain

Vandle · 13 Nov 2023 at 22:44

Hi all, I am soon to be leaving full time work in the hope of consulting back to the company I work for and a few others in the construction industry. I am in the process of setting up my own business. I'd like a simple website with a bit about me and a contact function. Likely only a single page for now but with the option to expand later and it to obviously include an email domain to match.
The domain name to match my business is available but while browsing I can see a few similar ones plus variations of my preferred name with .com and .com.au extensions. Would buying a few and have them all re-direct to the same site be easy enough? I have been looking on squarespace. Domains are cheap enough at $27 per year. Would probably have 4 or 5 of them. All business costs are deducted from my revenue before tax each quarter so a few hundred per year is neither here nor there. Or is it going to be easier to just worry about one?
Once I have the domain can I have multiple email addresses all falling into the same inbox? Like [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] etc?

Is Squarespace the best place for this? I don't need to be hosting files or having any downloads and all that. Would like to keep it simple from my end with minimum amount of effort to create and maintain it - especially in the first year. Any better suggestions for all in one management?

Cheers.

Longbow · 14 Nov 2023 at 12:37

It would make sense to buy the additional domains whilst they are available, as the extra cost is minimal. Some customers might not remember if it was .com, or .com.au, so buying both and redirecting one to the other is a good option.

You can redirect email address to another as well, at least with CPanel, they are known as email aliases, so emails sent to [email protected] & [email protected] will all be sent to [email protected]. Can't comment on whether this is possible on Squarespace though as I've not used them.

On Holiday · 14 Nov 2023 at 12:51

I'd just get a .com if it were me as having many domains doesn't really serve much purpose these days.
Multiple domains don't help for search results either and chances are all your add-on/redirect domains will not show up on search engines at all anyway.

I can see how a ".com.au" might be useful for your target audience to know you're "local" but depending on your business and how your domain name gets about then that could be irrelevant? Additionally the TLDs themselves don't have any tangible benefit to search rankings either.. i.e.. my UK business on .co.uk will perform equally as well as .com in search results.

Squarespace is a bit pricey for just a simple page + contact form, particularly as you have to buy email hosting separate.

I'm biased, but go for something cPanel-based (should only be a few £ a month) and use the provider's included site builder tools or if you've got an hour to invest on the site then you could knock something nice-looking up with WordPress.
Enable auto-updates, stick a CAPTCHA on the Contact Form and you're good to go.

Vandle · 14 Nov 2023 at 21:57

Thanks for the replies. I'm a bit clueless on this, I only mentioned Squarespace as I've heard them advertised and a browse of their site makes it appear to look like an all in one, hosting, domain and site design hub for a monthly fee with a degree of simplicity. Understand though you are paying for the convenience. Just looking at the WordPress site and they have an offer for new customers of $336 for 12 months, paid upfront which is cheap.

On Holiday · 15 Nov 2023 at 10:14

Vandle said:
Thanks for the replies. I'm a bit clueless on this, I only mentioned Squarespace as I've heard them advertised and a browse of their site makes it appear to look like an all in one, hosting, domain and site design hub for a monthly fee with a degree of simplicity. Understand though you are paying for the convenience. Just looking at the WordPress site and they have an offer for new customers of $336 for 12 months, paid upfront which is cheap.

Ah, my bad for not clarifying that - WordPress has both a paid solution similar to SquareSpace/Wix (wordpress.com), but they also make it available for free for self-hosting (wordpress.org).

It's better to go for generic web hosting and install WordPress on it - almost all hosting providers have one-click installers for WordPress not so it's not a daunting task in itself.

These guys would be suitable for hosting: https://dreamithost.com.au/web-hosting - looks like they have a Black Friday promo on too which would bring the yearly cost down to $33 instead of $83.40 for their start-up plan.

visibleman · 15 Nov 2023 at 13:31

@Vandle - Wix is another solution and from what i remember, it's slightly cheaper and they include emails.
There's generally discount codes (20-30%) flying around for both Wix and SquareSpace, so worth a hunt before purchasing.

On Holiday said:
Squarespace is a bit pricey for just a simple page + contact form, particularly as you have to buy email hosting separate.

Probably a better solution but given their target audience, getting Squarespace (or Wix etc) up and running with a basic site will be a lot, lot easier than getting a WP instance installed, configured and setup and that's before you create pages/site plus you still need to maintain the installation.
If Vandle was to head down this route, then it's worth looking at Stablepoint as they also offer Aussie hosting on their cPanel packages.

Vandle · 16 Nov 2023 at 05:10

Thanks guys.

Just signed up with Dreamhost and purchased my domain name. Looks like its relatively straight forward. Presume I just create a layout with wordpress now. The wordpress manager plug in is a very big and unmissable box on my client screen.
Old dog new tricks!!!

ristac · 10 Dec 2023 at 08:50

Dreamhost, there is a name from the past, I used to use them a long time ago. Good luck with going it alone, exciting times ahead.

Vandle · 12 Mar 2024 at 05:47

So switched the website to squarespace after a frustrating time trying to hook up wordpress as I just ended up with a basic looking blog I couldn't seem to edit. Tech support were helpful but got the feeling they are used to dealing with more web savvy people than me! Squarespace was a doddle and I am super happy with the result.
I have my email hosting through dreamhost. I added an address I wanted to use in C pannel. I can log into their webmail, which is pretty basic but also got it working on outlook on my laptop pretty easily. All good. Can't set it up on my iPhone though.

I use Outlook for OS on my phone. Have my personal email linked to it which is an @msn.com address (old school). Have tried adding an extra account. Host have given me the following info:
POP / IMAP Server: mail.(mydomain)
SMTP Server: mail.(mydomain) port 587.

Keep getting errors on the outlook app. There are more parts of the form to fill in such as IMAP incoming server, impap username and password, SMTP outgoing server, port, SMTP password. Do i just need extra info from the hosting company? I cant press the sign in button unless I have filled in all the fields and I've tried different combos of the info I have but still no good. If I switch off the advanced settings I still cant press sign in.
The email address I am adding has a microsoft 365 account linked to it which is different to the msn.com account so it may be that?

visibleman · 12 Mar 2024 at 13:43

Vandle said:
I use Outlook for OS on my phone. Have my personal email linked to it which is an @msn.com address (old school). Have tried adding an extra account. Host have given me the following info:
POP / IMAP Server: mail.(mydomain)
SMTP Server: mail.(mydomain) port 587.

Keep getting errors on the outlook app. There are more parts of the form to fill in such as IMAP incoming server, impap username and password, SMTP outgoing server, port, SMTP password. Do i just need extra info from the hosting company? I cant press the sign in button unless I have filled in all the fields and I've tried different combos of the info I have but still no good. If I switch off the advanced settings I still cant press sign in.
The email address I am adding has a microsoft 365 account linked to it which is different to the msn.com account so it may be that?

If it's cPanel then you should be able to get the details within your cPanel account by click Email Accounts > then click Connect Devices against the mailbox/email account you want the details for. It'll show a page similar to this (details will differ) -

Within the Outlook mobile app, Add an account > enter your email address, [email protected] etc, press Continue > select IMAP under Advanced heading. Fill in the Display Name and Description. And then you will need to fill in both IMAP and SMTP hostnames (mail.mydomain.com etc) and port numbers (typically 993 for IMAP and 465 if using secure connections), along with username (usually email address) and password for both (secure SMTP needs authentication usually). Security type for both typically SSL/TLS (make sure your site/domain name is covered by an SSL certificate like Let's Encrypt).
Once entered, then just click the tick in the corner to confirm all the details.

Outlook desktop is very similar albeit you want to select 'Sync directly with IMAP' rather than forcing all the mail through Microsoft's own datacentres/servers.

Vandle · 18 Mar 2024 at 06:30

visibleman said:
If it's cPanel then you should be able to get the details within your cPanel account by click Email Accounts > then click Connect Devices against the mailbox/email account you want the details for. It'll show a page similar to this (details will differ) -

Within the Outlook mobile app, Add an account > enter your email address, [email protected] etc, press Continue > select IMAP under Advanced heading. Fill in the Display Name and Description. And then you will need to fill in both IMAP and SMTP hostnames (mail.mydomain.com etc) and port numbers (typically 993 for IMAP and 465 if using secure connections), along with username (usually email address) and password for both (secure SMTP needs authentication usually). Security type for both typically SSL/TLS (make sure your site/domain name is covered by an SSL certificate like Let's Encrypt).
Once entered, then just click the tick in the corner to confirm all the details.

Outlook desktop is very similar albeit you want to select 'Sync directly with IMAP' rather than forcing all the mail through Microsoft's own datacentres/servers.

Thanks for that. Sorted now