Domain Names, Website & Email Hosting Explained

The internet is inherently broken and doesn’t work perfectly 100% of the time, things break and change, then need fixing and updating, so no web or email hosting is perfect. Hopefully there are some answers to some commonly asked questions below, and solutions for typical situations.

Domain names are registered at a domain registrar, such as GoDaddy, NameCheap, etc. Typically they cost US$10-20 per year for registration of a .com, .asia, or similar domain extension like .net, .org, etc. These are easy to register and you benefit from registering for 5-10 years at once.

This is only to register the domain, to do anything with it you need website or email hosting…

If email is a priority, my recommendation is to sign up to Google Apps, unfortunately it is no longer free (back in Jan 2013) but US$5/user month or $50/user a year is a small price to pay for no headaches. Many people have trouble with regular “all in one” web and email hosting, and if you add up all the hours spend on tech support and potentially missed emails. Having your email on Google Apps also means you have a lot more flexibility with your website hosting, it is easy to change when your email is not dependent on it.

Clients that have had constant email problems have found the solution in Google Apps, the problems just went away.

Most web hosting providers are resellers, they simply set you up an account on their rented server and have little to no control over the actual hardware, this keeps costs down but control is limited. Email is typically very important for small to medium companies and they often have issues, it is well worth the cost to put it in the hands of a specialist provider rather than used bundled with your web hosting.

For website hosting, most sites just need some basic PHP/MySQL cPanel hosting for a WordPress install, this is cheap, easily obtained, and tends to be reliable. As mentioned above, when your email is hosted centrally on Google Apps, it’s easy to shop around for the fastest one for where you need access and change your host.

You might also benefit from a CDN for your website, for about US$10 a month you can mirror the site in Europe and the US for faster international speeds, while having your main website hosting servers in Cambodia to get faster speeds for you and your customers in Southeast Asia.

Edit 28/06/2015 – I am establishing HostAsean.com – a website & email hosting company in Cambodia. Check the blog for promos and coupon codes.