PROS:
Hassle-free. Choosing a domain name and hosting company takes time and effort. How to choose a good domain name for your website? What features need to come with the hosting for a website to run smoothly? What about SSL certificates? OK, you’ve got a hosting. It needs to be set up. Whaaaat?
All this will require some research and learning, if you are going to do it on your own. Whereas, if you rent domain name & hosting from a web design company, all of the above will be set up for you as part of your web design project. You’ll just pick up the bill.
CONS:
Physical hosting server location as SEO signal. Few people know this, but the physical location of the server can be a positive or negative SEO signal for the search engines. Example: your business is a local one, domain name has country extension, you do not export or cater to neighboring countries. Let’s say you are a patisserie in Paris. In this case a positive SEO signal would be a site hosted with a french hosting provider. Normally, a web design agency has a reseller account with a single hosting provider. So you will not be able to choose where your hosting server is located.
Network latency. Another benefit of hosting locally is the network latency. Any network has physical structure, and this structure has latency. I.e. Delay in signal transmission. So, if you are in Paris, while your hosting server is in New Zealand, your site will load faster for New Zealanders, but slower for Parisians, because the signal will travel all these thousands of kilometres of wire before reaching a device in Paris.
Price. Resold hosting will be a bit more expensive than a direct contract with a hosting company. This is due to the time and effort the web design company would put into research, partition set up, billing, etc. So the higher price is absolutely justified. It’s not actually a CON, just a thing to be aware of.
Web design agency going out of business. This is a serious issue.Reseller web design agency may close down, sometimes due to bankruptcy. And clients are suddenly finding themselves without a site, when the new billing cycle starts. Because there’s no one to bill them anymore. Luckily, this type of situation is extremely rare.
As one can see, hassle free reseller hosting has several drawbacks. So When to choose a reseller?
It’s a good idea to choose reseller hosting if:
- You really-really hate research and have no time for all this hassle!
- Your web design reseller is a local business and/or they resell hosting from a local hosting company, with local servers.
Great middle ground solution
Your web design company can choose domain name and hosting for you based on proximity to your business and other SEO signals. You will just need to show up, register with the hosting company and pay. Web design company representative can walk you through the process. A 5 minute thing! Then they can set up the site on your hosting, install SSL certificate, create email accounts, etc. Normally this will only incur a small additional fee.
This middle ground solution is already included in price for all our clients that choose Prowebdesign’s Custom WordPress Site or Turnkey Small Business Site service!