Web hosting site & registrar recommendation.

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bluestang

[H]ard|Gawd
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Dec 14, 2018
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The company I work at currently has its website hosted with Web.com and is registered with Network Solutions. I believe Web.com acquired Network Solutions a while ago.

Anyways, I was asked to find a new hoster and registrar for our website/domain as quite a few of our emails are either going into the ether or being sent to SPAM/Junk boxes that no one checks. This started happening about a year ago. It's on and off when it happens or why (as far as I can tell). From what I've gathered researching email bounce backs that are not elivered beacuse they are mark as spam, it seems that it is an IP address issue because Network Solutions' and/or Web.com's pool of addresses our website/email is hosted on frequently lands on blacklists. I've been told that it is becuase they are allowing Spammers to use their addresses and do othing about it???

So their incompetence and lack of scrupples is affecting our emails getting received, and possibly even us getting emails in the first place. They send us a Request For Quote or Product Inquiry and don't get our responses. This is with customers we've been dealing with for decades and never had issues before.

So, anyone have a recommendation for a webite hoster and/or domain registrar that has great email support and reputation? Website was designed by someone at my work (no longer there) and would need to be able to be accesed for editing by us to make changes or add new product pages after it is transfered to the new hoster. I would assume a company that handles both the hosting and domain registration would be ideal instead of having to pay and deal with two different companies?

Thanks!
 
Namecheap and godaddy are my go-to domain registrars. You do want to have your hosting and domains separate so it can't be held hostage if you change hosting companies etc.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Why do you say that? I've used them for I think around 20 years and have had no issues nor heard of many really.
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They do the job. But they also nickle and dime you after any promotional period.

Back before Google domains got sold off to Squarespace, a .com was $5-$10 a year with all security and locking features included. GoDaddy for similar service required $25+ for me to do that. They are the “banking service” of registrars. They seek to entice with a low introductory rate (normally equaling a company like Google) and then rely on customer laziness so that they can charge an exorbitant rate after the introductory period. Generally a year.

If you're always trying to save a dollar, then moving on and off GoDaddy is a viable strategy to save registration money. But frankly no one wants to do that. I, like most everyone else, have better things to do.

I would recommend Google Domains, but technically they don't exist anymore. And I'm unsure if Squarespace will continue Google's pricing, of essentially just paying for registration and everything else being free. If Squarespace does, I'll recommend them. My domains are grandfathered in, so theoretically my prices should never change. But I don't know what will happen to new registrars.
 
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Thanks for the suggestions... keep them coming.

Well, we usually renew for 5 yrs at a time with the Privacy feature for our domain. Not too concerned on pricing as I'm not paying for it, but don't want to overpay to one place over the other for the same features. Dedicated IP is a must as I don't want to be mixed in with shared IPs that do spamming. Who issues your IP, register or hoster?


Hosting would have to be somewhere that lets you use you own program or coding for actual website. I believe ours was done with Microsoft Expressions by this ex-employee about 4 years ago. But using theirs if they have great templates that allows a company to showcase it's many products in lots of categories is an option. No need for online ordering by customers either as we are mostly B2B.

I was looking at Hostinger today. Any opinions on them?
 
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Namecheap for registrar (they include privacy protection for free btw)
Cloudflare for DNS
A2 for hosting

Avoid ANY company operated by Endurance International Group (EIG). I believe this list is mostly updated to be correct: https://www.webhostingsecretreveale...at-when-of-endurance-international-group-eig/

They tend to aquire a good many providers, some of which used to have a good reputation, and then just take them downhill with lackluster infrastructure and support.
 
Dopamin3 said:
Namecheap for registrar (they include privacy protection for free btw)
Cloudflare for DNS
A2 for hosting

Avoid ANY company operated by Endurance International Group (EIG). I believe this list is mostly updated to be correct: https://www.webhostingsecretreveale...at-when-of-endurance-international-group-eig/

They tend to aquire a good many providers, some of which used to have a good reputation, and then just take them downhill with lackluster infrastructure and support.
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Good info there. I see Network Solutions is on that list but Web.com isn't and that is weird since I thought Network Solutions is part of Web.com?
 
bluestang said:
Good info there. I see Network Solutions is on that list but Web.com isn't and that is weird since I thought Network Solutions is part of Web.com?
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So it's a little messy, but EIG merged with Web.com in 2021 forming a new company called Newfold Digital. Here is one source (and lots of other articles online)

So yea add Web.com and anything coming under the guise of Newfold Digital to the shitlist.
 
bluestang said:
2021...that's when a lot of our bullshit started with email issues and blacklists!
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Believe me, I know the pain of using Network Solutions. It's entertaining watching their outages (DNS and Email go down all the time) reported on DownDetector and seeing all the comments of everyone complaining about them. It's a spammers paradise and you can check mxtoolbox blacklist checker on any number of netsol sending servers. Last I checked they use spf.cloudus.oxcs.net and spf.registeredsite.com, you can do SPF lookups on those to get the actual IP ranges for sending servers. Plug a random one into the blacklist check and it's about a 50/50 shot it will be reported on numerous blacklists and half of receiving email servers will block you.

And when you call you get greeted with "Network Solutions, the world's first domain provider!" then get absolutely useless support reps for any issue who spew nonsensical garbage.
 
Yep, ours is on that list of blacklists right now. Our email is ran through that myregisteredsite.com crap. Of course, it only shows on UCEProtect and Spamcop. I heard those are BS sites themselves though. But evidently they still effect companies that use these RBLs.
 
I got my domain at dyn before they sold their registrar business. Kept it begrudgingly after the switch, despite the price hike. Sorry, know that doesn't help much.

My email host is fastmail.com. Dunno how their pricing compares, but I've been satisfied with their service. Simply set up the ns/mx hosts with your registrar to point to their servers, set up your user(s), and you're good to go! https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/1500000278002-Setting-up-your-domain-NS-MX
 
Oh, also, simple web pages (html/css/js) can be hosted on their file storage as well, but I think you'd probably run into usage limits if you used it for anything professionally (company website, etc). But you should be able to find another host easily enough, and it's probably better to separate your email and web hosts anyway.
 
Thanks for all the responses and suggestions. Special shout out to Dopamin3 for answering some more questions and help via PM!

I've decided to use A2 Hosting to move our website hosting to from Web.com. Will go with their "Drive" shared hosting yearly plan and add a dedicated IP to it ($5.99/mth extra).

I'll move our domain from Network Solutions to Cloudfare as they only charge a minimal fee above the ICANN fee for it. So $9.15/yr for it. Plus I can use them for DNS management as suggested.

Now, lets see how smooth this goes lol!
 
Ok, another quick question or 2 lol. I getting a little tripped up when reading on whether to transfer domain first (going from Network Solutions to Cloudfare) or the website first (going from Web.com to A2 Hosting).

I'm assuming I should do the website first as that is where most of our problems with email and blacklists lie correct? Then after everything gets migrated over to A2 and is working fine I can do the domain transfer?

I won't cancelling anything at Web.com or Network Solutions until weeks after everything is over to the new services just to make sure.
 
So... the thing that I haven't seen addressed in this thread is your email host. Are you using your web host as your mail server or are you hosting your own? I'd suggest that moving to a "paid" real email provider (basically, O365 or Google) with a proper configuration for SPF/DKIM/DMARC should fix a lot of your deliverability issues. They've kind of cornered the market by cracking down on anyone not paying them for the mailbox (which is likely where you're seeing your deliverabilty issues come from).

Good choice on Cloudflare - I'm moving all of my domains over from Google Domains which is saving near $3/year/each.

For what to do first - it really doesn't matter, just don't do both at the same time!

For the DNS/domain name setup - Cloudflare will import your current domain's configuration leaving you with just needing to swap the name servers where it's at, once set, then pull the domain over to CF. Do note they will try to add their "protection" on your domain by default which can mess up your current config and cause an SSL loop - make sure that's disabled.

For the server migration, it's just repointing DNS to the new IP once you get it set up...
 
Schro said:
So... the thing that I haven't seen addressed in this thread is your email host. Are you using your web host as your mail server or are you hosting your own? I'd suggest that moving to a "paid" real email provider (basically, O365 or Google) with a proper configuration for SPF/DKIM/DMARC should fix a lot of your deliverability issues. They've kind of cornered the market by cracking down on anyone not paying them for the mailbox (which is likely where you're seeing your deliverabilty issues come from).
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We are currently using Web.com email that came with our hosting so [email protected] and we use Outlook (as POP3 accounts) on all our machines with the occasional Webmail if needed when not in the office or something. Plan was to just use A2's email that comes in that package as well.
 
bluestang said:
We are currently using Web.com email that came with our hosting so [email protected] and we use Outlook (as POP3 accounts) on all our machines with the occasional Webmail if needed when not in the office or something. Plan was to just use A2's email that comes in that package as well.
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Do you have SPF/DKIM/DMARC set up now?
 
bluestang said:
Looks like only SPF & DMARC
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Without having a DKIM record on a domain, I've seen instances where emails delivered still have a DKIM signature and pass. I believe providers usually implement this even if a record doesn't exist on the actual domain. You can check by inspecting the headers on a received email. Regardless, this isn't a reason to stay with Web.com and good luck in your endeavors. Your best shot at having email delivered are: SPF/DKIM/DMARC set up properly and your sending servers don't end up on any blacklists.

bluestang said:
We are currently using Web.com email that came with our hosting so [email protected] and we use Outlook (as POP3 accounts) on all our machines with the occasional Webmail if needed when not in the office or something. Plan was to just use A2's email that comes in that package as well.
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POP is kinda meh since it doesn't sync across devices, removes messages from the email server after 2 weeks (or whatever you have Outlook set to) and if someone's account gets compromised they would likely never know leading to potential spam generated from the domain. On the flip side, it makes your job as a sysadmin easier since you can just change the incoming/outgoing servers in Outlook and not have to do any sort of email migration. If your new email provider offers large size mailboxes you may want to consider switching the users over to IMAP at some point. Cross device sync is nice and so is being able to retrieve all emails if something ever happens.
 
Question for anyone experienced with A2...
A2 has this message: " » Dedicated IP: Dedicated IP (Recommended for SSL Certificates)"
but at the same time their market fluff says they're providing a free SSL certificate before even prevented the dedicated IP sales option. So is a dedicated iP necessary with their startup package, or no?
 
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