You can buy your domain name with your hosting provider or you can keep them separate. There are Pros and Cons to both options. It’s more convenient to have them in one place but it’s more secure to have them separate. We hope to earn your full and complete trust but we can’t speak for anyone else you may hire who will require access.

You will certainly get spam calls, email and snail mail if you do not have it, especially if registering a domain name that is clearly for a business. Yet, whether you actually need to keep your contact information private would really depend on whether the address for your business is private or not. Most home-based businesses would want domain privacy; a lot of businesses with a public address would want it public and not pay extra.

It’s always better to have more security than less, but the cost is always a factor. If you plan on subscribing to the Webmaster Service then that will give you a lot of basic security features, such as backups kept independent of hosting and a firewall plugin. There’s a lot more information on the resources for WordPress Security & Performance and Website Services.

It’s up to you if you want to do that part or stop there. If we are building your site then we can take it from that point and you don’t have to do anyting else. Again, we can do the whole thing with you on a video meeting if you’d like.

A “shared hosting plan” means you are sharing server space with other websites even though you have your own account. Imagine it’s your own apartment in an apartment building. An upgrade from shared hosting is VPN hosting, which stands for virtual private network. It’s still semi-shared but they set it up more like you’re own penthouse. An upgrade from that is dedicated hosting, which means you own the whole building. Most small businesses start with shared hosting until or unless they know they will have website traffic that demands more hosting resources.

Managed WordPress hosting can be shared hosting, VPN hosting or dedicated hosting. If it’s managed then that means they set up methods of automated updates for WordPress and other automated maintenance tasks.

If you are using a hosting provider on the list above for Managed WordPress hosting then we will often discount the Webmaster Service. It still helps because the Webmaster Service does some things that managed hosting does not. There is a good reason to have a backup stored independent of hosting, plus the Webmaster Service is more personalized and it also means that you don’t have to publish content or make changes to current content as your business evolves. See more about the Webmaster Service.