After a day of research, I've settled on a company and created a Gmail admin account to register domain and hosting. Domain: what sites are recommended for registering .co.uk domains. I've heard some shady sites will snatch the domain after a user search. I've seen recommendations for 123-reg as well as complaints about price hikes after the first year. Company email: Is this done through the domain service, hosting or website? How do I get myname@mybusiness.co.uk Hosting: Shared, VPS hosting or package deals? As a start-up language school and expecting very little traffic but will be doing some bookings with Paypay and Weixin. Do I need a VPS? Website builders: Is this the way to go these days or should I higher a freelance web designer? I will want to add classes and update photos to the site occasionally. If I go with a website builder I will still likely pay someone to get a not stock look. It seems that as soon as I want to take payment plans jump in price. Will I have trouble adding WeChat payment? Priority is on the domain questions so I can get that sorted first.
Domains: Personally I have been using GoDaddy for my own stuff, as well as my mother's business. Easy to use, lots of guides and templates. For work we use NetworkSolutions and Verio, both of which I hate, the control panel is not friendly and advanced stuff I have to raise tickets for. Company email: When you setup a domain, you can normally get a catch all account that basically gets everything@yourdomain.com. Storage is really limited and the connection options are poor. You have four options, 1) Pay the registrar for email services. The cost per mailbox is normally high and space per mailbox low. Migration to other platforms later can be tricky 2) Setup a linux / windows mailserver. Your gonna need a fixed IP to do this if you want to run it at home. AWS / Azure I spose you could do it, but I dont think the support / maintenance burden is worth it. Plus given its email, if somehow you setup an open relay it will be at the detriment of your domainname / brand 3) Purchase Google Apps for business. You get access to GSuite per user plus other things. IIRC but dont quote me, GAPP's for small business has a 10 user minimum so this might not be cost effective for you! 4) Office 365 Small business. In my opinion (im an MS guy) the best solution. You can purchase even just one account, various tiers available so if you are happy using all web apps (excel, word etc) it can be cheaper. Or you can also have a a full blown office subscription which gives you desktop apps! Hosting: What is the CMS you are going to be using for the site, or are you planning a custom build? If its custom dont forget that you can also host websites in AWS, either through dedicated boxes or it is also possible to host simple HTML sites on S3 buckets (i do this for things like splash screens etc.) Our work sites generally use drupal or wordpress, and we use a host called Pantheon, for a paid for subscription you get live, staging and dev environments. Also what I like best is because you are purchasing CMS as a service, they are taking care of all the background maintenance. Some thing you will have to do if you go the self hosted / custom route. Website Builders: We have our own in house front end dev that maintains our drupal. Also have a full stack dev on retainer as well as third parties support contracts with dev agencies. Honestly a bit over kill for you. But I would suggest that you check out PeoplePerHour. Ive used it a couple of times when I needed some additional support in SharePoint. Basically you describe what you want to do and folks tender bids. I was able to meet and chat through my requirements before I committed to anything. Then the dev submits a bid which clearly has the scope and goals. You accept and make a payment which is held by the platform until the work is complete and you mark that you are satisfied. They then release the funds to the dev. Just keep an eye out for the guys that will use the platform to make an introduction but dont want to use it for payment / escrow.
Too bad, I'm gonna quote you! You can purchase G-Suite accounts per user from 1 user upwards. I don;t think there's a limit on the number of mailboxes, so you could have one user and 5 different mail addresses for your domain if you only have one login to view any of them (works out well e.g. for separating invoices@herp.derp, sales@herp.derp etc). Keeping website hosting and domain/DNS separate is a good idea, as is keeping web hosting and email separate. A website is the main target for any hack attempt, and by keeping DNS and email separate you minimise any damage (site gets hacked, point the DNS still under your control to a new server with a static "oops, back soon" message while you deal with the problem, emails still come through), and you can add all the awkward multi-factor-and-a-phone-call-and-a-pricate-key authentication you want for your DNS account without needing all of that every time you want to log into the website to make a change.
