Recently a colleague asked us for a divorce. A divorce of her Google for Business email from her domain registration service, of course! She had purchased a Google for Business email account from Bluehost, and was frustrated by spam phone calls linked to her domain name. Depending on what state you’re in, a technology divorce may be more difficult than a marital one. In this case, we advised her to contact Google’s support, which does tend to be very helpful. They were able to take care of the administrative side and switch her billing from Bluehost to Google, but there were still some onerous and perplexing technical aspects she had to handle herself.
What Do You Mean by ‘Reseller’?
Many hosting providers will provide services like email, domain registration, or even website builders as a reseller. These hosting providers have entered into a reseller arrangement with a bigger provider, like Google or GoDaddy or Weebly. The general idea is to turn that hosting company into a turnkey service provider, a one-stop shop.
What they don’t tell you is that it’s often difficult to untangle these relationships. For example, we were asked to take over a site that we determined had been built with Weebly. When we contacted Weebly to try to reset passwords, we were told that Weebly was not, in fact, able to help us. Eventually we were able to figure out that the site was managed through a reseller at a hosting provider. And then, when we went to edit it, we found that we were limited to support through that hosting provider instead of Weebly. And the features available to us were limited—this was not a full-blown Weebly site. Would it even be possible to move this site to Weebly to be administered by them? The answer, it appeared, was no. We’d have to rebuild the site entirely from scratch. What a tremendous waste.
Go to the Source
Given our experience in straightening out complicated relationships like this, we recommend going straight to the source whenever you have the opportunity. When Squarespace offers you a free domain for your first year, we say: don’t bother. When the domain is renewed the next year, it will be considerably more expensive than a regular domain registrar, and you’ll end up spending much more over the years than you could ever hope to save from that free first year. Get a domain at GoDaddy or another reputable registrar, and use a coupon code. Right now there’s a 93% off sale on domain registrations, for example.
Similarly, if your hosting service offers you a chance to purchase your Wix or Weebly or whatever website builder service through them, think twice. You’ll get a better supported and more full-featured website if you skip the reseller.
Questions about what constitutes a “source”? It can certainly be confusing. Just because you’ve heard of a company doesn’t necessarily mean they are a good choice for purchasing a service. Google offers Google for Business email, but it’s not a domain registrar as such, so we recommend avoiding registering a domain through them. Alternatively, a company may credibly be a reputable provider of multiple services: GoDaddy is a good choice for both hosting and domain registration. If you have questions, by all means, ask… we’re happy to help before you’re enmeshed!
