In a perfect world, everything would just work. Unfortunately, this world we have isn't perfect, so there will be problems. With website hosting, issues can arise. Most of these issues tend to deal with security and measures that have had to be put in place to prevent website compromises and junk/spam email.
When going with a website host and email host, you do not want to involve too many vendors. If your domain name registrar is one place, your name servers somewhere else, you website on a separate host and email with some large, online service, issues could arise. The problem for you, the customer, in these situations is that it's very easy for each of these vendors to point fingers at each other. When that happens, issues linger and do not get resolved.
The advantage of going with a small number of vendors or a single vendor is that all their systems work well together. When there's an issue, you deal with one source. They, then, have access to all that they need and can better resolve any issues that come up. They don't have to wait for you to contact another vendor on their behalf and ask a question for them and then get that answer and send something else for you to send to them, etc. You also get more control or leverage on your side because you have an excuse to withhold payment if an issue isn't being resolved. With multiple vendors, you don't know with which vendor the issue lies and you lose your leverage.
We're not a huge company, so we don't provide absolutely everything but we do have strategic partners where we can provide quite a bit. We provide the following services related to website, domain and email hosting - either ourselves or though vendors we work closely with:
Many of our clients use us for all of these services and they're happy with what we provide. We're also better able to serve them since there are less hurdles in the way of us solving their problems.
When we host your website, we're also able to help you with PCI Compliance.
Honestly, the wrong thing to do is set yourself up with too many vendors. You might be fine most of the time but when there's an issue, you're not going to know who to call, you'll see a lot of finger pointing and you have no leverage to get the problem resolved quickly. We're never saying to any client of ours that they have to host with us. It's their choice. The amount of time we'll spend dealing with another host is limited (we do include some time as we know there can be small hiccups) and then we'll have to start charging you for dealing with your host.
We've written this article to help you think through your website and email hosting setup. We want to see your, your company/organization and your website succeed.
