I want to secure a domain name, receive and respond to emails (less than 5) and host a small information only website.
I would like to be able to use the email address on IOS and MacOS.
It is really just to establish my consulting business. Don’t need anything fancy at all.
TIA
You writing the code for it? You can host it for free on Netlify, if it won't get much traffic then you'll always be in their free tier. For email you could use something like Zoho or Fastmail, or better yet use Gsuite.
Please never use Netlify. https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/1b14bty/netlify_jus…
Cloudflare Pages is free. Fastmail is far too expensive, just go with Microsoft Exchange Plan 1 at that point.
That's a shame. Even on free tier they send the huge bill after DDOS.
Github Pages is free too.
Perhaps also consider Google pages? It is free to host. And you can point a custom url to your website via cloudflare as well.
I do all of this with my own O365 tenant. I pay $8/m for O365 email, 2TB of cloud storage and my own website hosted in Azure. If you're willing to put in a few hours to figure out, it'll be worth it.
What's the name of that MS365 plan you're on? Sounds promising, and doesn't sound like the bare essentials enterprise one either.
Just M365 Business Basic. Looks like its $9/m now. 2TB is 1TB OneDrive and 1TB SharePoint.
Hosting the website in Azure is done via a Static Website in a storage container.
Just for clarification the Azure stuff is housed in a separate tenant to O365 as you need a subscription to Azure for the Azure side of things to work.
But yes it can be cheap for low traffic sites, though the costs can rapidly increase as well.
I move my shared hosting environment off Azure last year as even with the partner discounts it was rather expensive.
It works out much cheaper hosting on a regular VM in a datacentre.
Azure is good for high traffic events type sites where you need the ability to add and remove servers at a moments notice to cater for larger amounts of traffic.
Or if you need load balancing and a bunch of other stuff Azure is handy and cheaper then AWS for certain projects.
Hosting - VentraIP about $5 a month - Definitely stay away from GoDaddy or CrazyDomains
Email - VentraIP about $2 a month or Google Workspace
I use Google Workspace for my personal email plus side hustle, works very well and reliably. You can have lots of aliases' on one email and send from them as well (you need to know how to configure it, but it's relatively straightforward).
Web dev here. VentraIP is a good choice for the domain. You can also get hosting from them but just make sure you're happy with the renewal rates too. Else just use Robtec Hosting for hosting. You can also use the hosting built-in email, as long as you setup properly or purchase dedicated like Google Workspace/Microsoft Exchange etc.
If it's a static site, why pay for hosting at all? Change your nameservers to Cloudflare, upload site files to Cloudflare Pages, add the domain, done. Kind of reads like an ad considering that was your first post.
Based on OP post, it seemed to me they might be using a Site Builder or CMS as its quite typical nowadays. If OP is indeed using a static site, then your suggestion makes perfect sense. I mentioned that I'm a web developer to indicate that my recommendations come from professional experience. I have often referred clients to registrars and hosting providers based on what has worked well in the past. I mentioned my background simply to add some context to my recommendations. :)
@ldd-mn: No worries. As said, most small businesses I've come across for even basic informational websites use CMS such as WordPress hence my assumption - based on experience. If not, I'll consider it a misunderstanding from my part. Have a good day.
I have been happy with Clickhost (https://clickhost.com.au/) and VentraIP (mentioned above). I did not have a good experience with Obble.
Clickhost just bought by VentraIP, which is pretty dissapointing given they specifically abandoned ship from a VI buy prior, and said they didn't plan to sell (source: their website, current customer).
The only issue with using free services for a business is the provider one day could decide to discontinue those free services and as its free they legally don't need to provide any service level agreement or anything else.
So your free website could end up costing you in downtime if its discontinued without notice.
Also website hosting and email services for business is all tax deductable anyway so doesn't cost that much in reality.
I want to add something to this as someone that has many years of industry experience in the Australian web hosting space a lot of companies have gone broke over the years leaving people with no hosting and even minimal to know notification even 2-4 providers that could be considered large and reputable closed up shop within a few days leaving customers unable to retrieve their data.
In actual fact OzBargain deal posts are actually quite a good example of some of this. The amount of flyby nighter lifetime offers we've seen in here disappear
The safest thing to do in this space is always have a contingency plan and keep your own backups of your website.
Large free offerings from cloud providers like Cloudflare, Netlify, Amazon, Microsoft Azure + Github Pages may end at some point but I doubt you'd get abrupt interruption over notification first and no access to your data. Add worse, you're probably going to get a few days notice and a few more days to migrate.
But I'd say large tech companies when shutting down free tears have a better reputation than some shared web hosting providers that have shut up shop or worse lost or customer data and shut up shop in the Australian market over the last 15 years. Looking at the US and UK markets as well, no better.
The moral of the story is even if you're paying it's no safe bet and no replacement for a contingency and your own backups. The next best advice I can give is always be evaluating your options. Don't think this is going to be something you can set and forget for more than a year or two at one time.
I use zoho mail which is free for up to 5 users. Significant limitations (can't use smtp/IMAP to configure email client, have to use mobile app on phone) but free is free. Also comes with aliases catch-all addresses etc. Support is top-notch even on free tier.
Edit: Also, use Netflify for Web hosting and dns though traffic to it is negligible.
Thanks! Lots of great suggestions.
I highly recommend Quantum Core. Best price, excellent service (thanks Luke!)
https://quantumcore.com.au/
Quantum Core helped me to migrate from another website hosting provider. They did all the work for me and the whole experience was effortless and seamless. Top marks!