I'm looking for a cheap web host where I can put up a simple website for a business I am looking to kick off. Basically I am looking for a site where potential clients can come in, find out about my services, submit a "contact me" form, and where I can post relevant articles. Plus I want an email address with my own domain. I could go through my current host that I use for my current business, but was wondering if there were any low cost alternatives.
GoDaddy is pretty darn cheap for low-traffic sites, but my experience with their email options has not been good.
Squarespace.com has gotten rave reviews from lots of folks, has a two week free trial period, and costs ~$100/yr, depending upon the package you get. I haven't used them, so I can't speak from personal experience. I have used 1and1.com, which is slightly more. No complaints about them, though their templates suck (when I looked at them a while back, haven't checked them recently), but you can use your own if you so desire. If you decide to use either of those two, let me know before you plunk down any money. I can find you a discount code for both of them, and if you go with 1and1.com, I'll get a break on my next bill as well.
Thanks so far. Yeah I've not been happy with templates I've found. I use google for my other business, but I'd rather not pay for them to host the email and the other company to host the website. I am looking for the lowest cost solution and trying to balance that against not having a crappy site
I have found some pretty good (but not great) templates here. They range from free to $$$. I know nothing about these guys, other than they offer hosting for $20/yr.
Um, say what? I already pay Google for my primary business email hosting. That was the only way to get the custom domain
Hmm, I guess they canned the free versions for new users. Used to be free for up to 50 users, then for up to 10. I have it free on a lot of domains grandfathered in.
I use free google mail for a custom domain of my personal account. (but you could run it off a separate free account). You have to have a DNS host who supports mailbox forwarding, most decent ones will do this. Create mail boxes on your DNS host, e.g. contact@mydomain.com and forward them to me@mypersonaldomain.com through their control panel. Next from gmail's settings you choose to 'send as another email address'. This will send you a confirmation mail that you should get in your mail box with a code. Enter the code and now gmail trusts you to send from contact@mydomain.com. Repeat for every domain you want to send to. If you're using a dedicated account for work make sure that sending from say myname@mydomain.com is default rather than using your personal one.
