Is it wise to keep both your domains and hosting together?

Today, there are many traditional providers which offer both domains and hosting for WordPress; and with it, one advice has stood the test of time.

The advice, you ask, is - Never keep your domains and hosting together.

However, you will be tempted to store your site in the same place as to where you got your domain as there are many renowned providers which not only provide seamless user interfaces for managing both of them, but they also offer free domains when you purchase their hosting.

Even though it looks natural, the pairing, however, has the tendency to turn nasty shortly leading to security risks and loss of stability. It is due to this reason that it is recommended to go for domains and hosting from different companies.

But the question is – who gives it a thought to follow this procedure?

Chances are, not many, right?

There is a myriad of reasons as to why you should keep your domains and host separately. Let's go through each of them, shall we?

1. Organization – There are many WordPress developers who test out the themes, scripts and plugins for compatibility by hosting test sites across multiple servers and provider. It is entirely feasible to get your domain and hosting with one provider, but if you have multiple domains and hosting and that too, scattered among various providers, then, it can turn out to be a problem shortly.

Either keep all or most of your domains registered with one provider, and this often makes the process of development quite easy and organized. Or else, half of your time will be spent in moving back and forth between multiple domains and hosting.

2. Trust – Before you decide to choose any particular hosting provider and domain registrar, you should research them thoroughly. Go beyond their usual reviews and look for their reputation within the industry. If your choices turn out to be brand new or they have a less favourable standing among the masses, then, you should be cautious. What are you going to do if they vanish within the next few years and with it, your domain and site too? It will be quite a disaster.

Hence, no matter what, you should check out all the angles before solidifying on one. That being said, it is recommended that you should keep both your sites and domains separate, as in that way, even if you lose your sites, your domains, however, will stay with you.

3. Price – Whenever you see a deal that's too good to pass it up, remember that there is always a catch. The same goes in the world of domains and hosting too. More than usual, you are going to see that lower costs are associated when the domains are coupled with hosting as there are many dual providers who will offer you a great deal if you buy them at once. Usually, you will need to buy hosting for one while a year to get that free domain.

But what they don't tell you is that if by any chance you want to switch your hosts during that one year, it will be quite hard to do so because you are not going to get a refund for the unused time which will be left in your contract.

4. Good support – I am sure that you know that the domains are regulated by ICANN, but the thing is that even though they look out for domains, they, however, don't supervise hosting. If your site runs into any problems, the only place that you can turn to is your host, should you also got your domain from the same provider. If it turns nasty then, you will want to change the providers, then the best that you can hope is that your host doesn't end up holding your domain name for ransom.

But as long as you purchase your domain names from an ICANN accredited registrar and keep your hosting separate, you won't have to worry about losing your domain name as ICANN will back you up.

5. Control – If you get your domain and hosting from the same provider, you may run into problems later, which is why it is paramount to make it clear on who controls your domain and hosting.

Do your research on the hosting company that you are planning to go or else, you are going to be disappointed later on. Unknown to you, certain issues may crop up later, and suddenly, it will become a hassle for you in keeping your domain name and hosting together. If you keep your domain name and hosting separate, then, it will provide you with control in situations beyond your control.

6. Security – Till now, in the year 2017, 50 million websites have either been hacked or have been the victims of malware or phishing scams, and 2018 has only started. If you keep your domain name hosted with your site, the hacker will only need to complete a few steps to access your site and your hosting account.

However, if you spread your resources, though it won't guarantee that you won't get hacked, at least it will be less easy for the hacker to hack in and it is also more likely that you are not going to lose everything.

That being said, no matter how many accounts you have, you should go for strong passwords or else, the hackers will be able to guess yours in mere minutes.

7. Stability – It's quite common for any site to suffer from outages. If that happens to you and if your domain is registered separately, you have nothing to worry about since you have the option to redirect your domain to either a backup site or a maintenance site. Though you can still redirect your domain if it is still registered with the hosting company, it will be appalling for your business if the entire hosting company suffers the outage leaving you with no access to your account.

So, you see, because of the above reasons, it is considered that you should keep your domains and host separate. It is not a necessity to do exactly like that of course since, at the end of the day, everything depends on your wants and preferences.

What is your preferred choice? Do you keep your domains and hosting separate? Or together?