One bill, one person,
and the renewals
actually get done.
Most small businesses have their domain with one company, their hosting with another and their email somewhere a former developer set up years ago. Nobody owns the whole picture, so the day something lapses, nobody notices.
I put all of it on one account, in South Africa, and I do the renewals rather than emailing you a reminder to do them yourself.
Worth checking today
Whose name is your domain in?
Registration details are private these days, so nobody can look this up for you. Find the invoice, or ask whoever set it up to show you. If it is in a developer's name rather than your business, you do not control your own address, and that is the most common way a small business loses its website.
When does it renew?
If nobody can answer that, the answer is usually “we find out when it stops working”.
Is your email on your own domain?
A business card with a Gmail address on it costs you more credibility than most people realise.
What you get.
South African hosting
Your pages served from here, for customers who are here. Faster for them, and you are dealing with someone in the same country rather than a support queue on another continent.
Your domain, in your name
Registered to your business, in your name, so the address is an asset you own rather than something rented from whoever built your site.
Professional email
Real mailboxes on your own domain, so you are name@yourbusiness.co.za and not a Gmail address on a business card. I send you the settings for your phone and your laptop.
SSL, and the renewals
The padlock stays valid and the domain does not lapse. Renewing both is my job.
A person, on WhatsApp
There is no ticket system and no call centre, and you never have to explain it again to someone new. You message me and I answer.
What hosting does not cover
Hosting keeps the service running. Watching the site, making changes and working your Google listing is the care plan, and I keep the two separate on purpose.
Hosting, or the care plan?
Hosting is the utility
Your site stays online, your email arrives, your domain and certificate stay valid. For a site that rarely changes, that may be all you need.
Best for: a site whose pages rarely change, where you are happy to keep an eye on it yourself and only call me when something is actually wrong.
The care plan is the work
Everything above, plus changes done in two working days, a daily health check, backups, your Google Business Profile managed and a monthly report. The hosting is included in the price.
Best for: a site you need to keep changing, prices, staff, hours and photos, plus a Google listing you want worked on every month rather than left sitting.
Frequently asked
No. Most sites move across without any fuss, whoever built them and whatever they are built in. Some need particular software running underneath them, and those take a proper look first. Send me the address and I will tell you which one yours is, and whether moving it is even worth doing.
You do. It is registered in your name and it stays that way. This is worth checking with whoever has yours now, because a domain registered in a developer's own name is one of the most common ways a small business loses control of its own address.
Yes. Real mailboxes on your own domain, so you are name@yourbusiness.co.za rather than a Gmail address on a business card. They work in Outlook, on your phone and in a browser, and I send you the settings to put in. To be clear about what this is not: it is standard mail on your own domain, not Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. If you want one of those instead, that is a separate product with its own monthly cost and I will set it up as its own job.
In South Africa. For a business whose customers are here, that means pages load from down the road rather than from another continent, and when something needs sorting out you are talking to someone in the same country.
Hosting covers the service itself. It does not include me watching for expiring certificates and lapsing registry records, making changes to your pages or looking after your Google Business Profile. Those are the care plan, deliberately kept separate so you are not paying for something you did not ask for.
Not sure who controls your domain?
Send me the address and I will look it up and tell you what I find, whether you move anything or not. It is a two minute job and it is worth knowing.
What I can see from the outside
- Where your domain is pointed and which company is actually running it.
- Where the site is hosted, and whether the certificate is valid and how long it has left.
- Whether your domain is set up so your email lands in the inbox instead of the spam folder.