Keep your domains and hosting together

For a new website, you will need both a domain (your site address) and hosting (where your content will live). But where do you go for these services?

Some people like to keep it all separate by using a different company for each. But that’s not always the best option. In this article we’ll explain why choosing a single company for your domain and website hosting is often better.

The misconception about domains and hosting

If you ask your friends for advice or search online forums, you might hear that you need to keep your domain registrar and hosting separate, with a different company for each. But this is simply not true. 

Consider just a few of the advantages of housing the two products under the same roof:

• Single point of contact
• Manage domain and hosting through the same account
• Customer support can help you with both products at once
• Easier DNS management
• Avoid back and forth between providers

So why do people recommend keeping these services separately?

This myth originated in the days when domain registrars focused mainly on the domains themselves. Twenty years ago, most providers were new companies trying to balance demand and services with their bottom line. Lots of small companies were entering the ring and had to cut corners just to compete, often over-promising and under-delivering. So it was difficult to find a company you could trust.

Complicating matters, most registrars that did offer hosting treated it as an afterthought, neglecting key investments in the hardware, security, and support needed for reliable hosting. If customers found the hosting inadequate, they may have had difficulty moving to a better provider.

But with today’s more robust and stable tech market, these problems are a thing of the past (much like the <blink> tag has vanished from nearly all websites). Web professionals now recognize that there is no danger in registering your domains with the same company that provides your hosting.

Your domains and hosting in one place

Instead of trying to find two companies for your domain and your hosting, why not use your time researching the single best company for your website? Here are some extra reasons that it makes more sense. 

Convenience 

One provider for both domain and hosting means management is much simpler. With all your website-related services in one place, it’s easier to update settings, renew services, and troubleshoot any challenging issues. You also won’t need to deal with multiple interfaces and logins.

Seamless integration

With just one provider, the integration between domains and hosting will usually be much smoother. Your setup will be quicker because the connection between the two accounts is closer and DNS management is much easier to handle.

Technical support

When domains and hosting have the same provider, you can rely on a single point of contact for technical support. Your support team will have a clear understanding of both your domain and hosting setup, which means faster and more efficient troubleshooting and problem resolution.

Compatibility and optimization

Some hosting providers offer specific optimizations or features tailored to their own domain services. So when you keep them together, you can take advantage of these optimizations, ensuring better performance, security, and compatibility between your domain and hosting.

Billing and renewals

Managing billing and renewals is more streamlined when you have both domain and hosting with one provider. You receive consolidated invoices and reminders, simplifying the payment process and helping you avoid potential disruptions caused by missed renewals.

Choosing a trusted and reliable provider

A quick search will show that most of the larger hosting providers also offer domain registration services. But with so many options, choosing the right one can be a daunting task. 

There are four important questions to ask when choosing a hosting provider.

1. How does the provider manage its servers?

Every website, email, online game, and mobile app sits on a server somewhere in the world.

When considering your hosting provider, you should find out how they manage their servers, especially for shared hosting, which is a common option for smaller websites.

Does the company overload servers with too many separate accounts, causing downtime and outages, or does it treat all hosting with respect, ensuring that even the most inexpensive options get the same great service?

All Namecheap servers for Shared, Reseller, VPS, and EasyWP (WordPress) Hosting use the latest hardware technologies, which is a combination of servers with enterprise components. All our servers come with a 99.9% uptime guarantee. 

For monitoring, we use a card in the server that has spares onsite, as well as same-day or next-day replacements from our vendors. For your safety, we always follow the best practices in security and network protection.

We host a high number of accounts and provide real-time data for optimal server-loading policies. We also avoid the cost-cutting strategies other hosting providers use, such as overloading physical hardware to maximize profit margins. 

Instead, we only load servers with half the accounts that our competitors do using similar hardware. With growth, we add new servers when existing servers reach their optimal load. 

Our customers frequently find Namecheap hosting to be superfast, so feel free to try out our speeds for yourself.

2. Does the hosting provider use a datacenter?

All hosting provider servers should be located in at least one data center. These include registry interaction services, DNS servers, email servers, database servers, and hosting servers.

Namecheap only uses higher-level datacenters, Tier 3 or above. These include fully redundant power, cooling/environmental controls, and physical security, and they must be located in areas at the lowest risk from natural disasters.

Namecheap runs redundant power to all of our shared hosting servers, which means there are two or more physical power supplies. We have never experienced a power issue with either our primary or redundant power feeds, but for extra safety, each server has two power supplies, connected to two separate power distribution systems, battery backups, and generators.

When choosing our datacenters, we consider:

• Cables and paths into the building with multiple bandwidth carriers on-site.
• Fuel to power the onsite generators if the main power goes out.
• Coldwater storage onsite for cooling the environmental systems in the event that the water supply is disrupted.
• Proven redelivery contracts for any consumables that provide power.

At Namecheap, we are extremely careful in our datacenter selection to ensure all customer data is protected.

3. How is the Hosting Provider’s Network?

In order to deliver content to a global audience, a good hosting provider needs a fast and reliable network that connects all of its datacenters. This network must have the capacity for natural usage growth and traffic spurts, as well as sufficient protection against DDOS or other attacks on services.

A high-quality network involves a number of different providers, ensuring constant service even if part of the network is disrupted. The network must also employ top-rated network hardware—routers, switches, and firewalls.

Some hosting providers rent network capacity as bandwidth or data transfer from their server provider to save money and resources. Namecheap avoids this, but instead, we’ve built our own network, which has the ability to switch to different servers when one is unavailable. 

This network has multiple routers, each with multiple routing engines, power supplies, and network meshes, and it means we’ve enjoyed 100% network for a long time.

We have also built our own system to protect against DDoS attacks.

4. What about Customer Support?

Some hosting providers outsource their tech support. This leads to support personnel unfamiliar with the products and lacking motivation to provide excellent service. As a result, bugs, errors, and other user difficulties aren’t properly communicated to the provider for resolution.

Namecheap support couldn’t be more different. We manage our own 24/7 support team and hire the best people to assist customers at every stage of their journey. Our CS team is committed to providing excellent support and ensuring every problem is fully resolved.

We have separate support teams for domains, hosted services, and SSL, and each team knows its products inside and out. The teams are also categorized into three levels. Levels 1 and 2 are customer-facing and handle sales, technical, and general questions. Our Level 3 team focuses on operations as well as research and development.

The way our support training works, you’re much more likely to speak to an expert who can help you across multiple issues than you are to be transferred from one department to another.

The result? Our team delivers an extremely high level of customer support.

Why Namecheap?

At Namecheap, we take our tech seriously, investing in top-of-the-line equipment and staff to make sure your websites are fast, experience 99.9% uptime, and are easy to manage. This means we offer up-to-date cPanel access for Shared Hosting and an intuitive, all-in-one dashboard for EasyWP.

We also integrate domain registration and hosting so you can get up and running super fast. On top of all this, we still offer excellent support and unbeatable pricing.

Our size and our buying power allow us to leverage economies of scale at every level. We pass these savings on to our customers and offer great value hosting options. This includes Shared Hosting and EasyWP, one of the fastest and most affordable managed WordPress hosting options.

With Namecheap, it’s easy to find an available domain and the hosting plan that’s right for your specific needs.