As you may now if you are following The CogitActive Saga, I decided to entrust SiteGround with my website. Choosing a good hosting provider was no easy task. Importantly, I based my decision on the essential features a hosting provider should deliver; security, speed and scalability were those that matter the most for me. What I didn’t care about, however, was whether such a company would offer a free domain name or not. Why? Because I decided to keep my domain name and web hosting separate.
“Did I change my mind?”
Lately, I noticed something new in the Home tab of my User Area – where SiteGround generally displays important messages. Before there was a carousel (i.e. a set of images that rotate) showcasing three NEW FEATURES, including the recently added Free Backup Restores (on StartUp plan; see Getting my web host). Before that, there was a REFERRAL DEAL message encouraging you to invite your friends to SiteGround
. Honestly, I didn’t care much about these promotional messages – thus far.
However, this new DOMAIN TRANSFER message, together with an accompanying e-mail1, impels me to write this post. So, should I transfer my domain to my SiteGround hosting and enjoy convenience at a great price
?
Let me start by recalling that…
… in its Getting Started Tutorial, SiteGround explains how to set up an external domain2 (in Step 1: Set Up Your Domain) – a process that I did follow to a certain extent when I pointed my domain name to my website.
Notably, just below this Initial Domain Setup, there was also a Transfer Domains to SiteGround tutorial. Not only was the latter detailing how to make SiteGround your new domain registrar
, but it was also enumerating some domain name transfer benefits
:
Domain name transfer . . . makes managing your hosting and domains more convenient since it spares you the need to communicate with two separate organizations.
With SiteGround, you will be automatically notified when your domain expiration date is approaching.
If you decide to upgrade your account, we will take care of the domain redirecting.
Along with a domain name transfer, you get an additional 1-year renewal for the most popular generic top-level domains (.com, .net, .org, .info etc.).
Granted, dealing with only one company offers many advantages (see Self-hosting: a hard egg to crack). Nonetheless, while their third argument is quite compelling, their second one is worthless since any (good) registrar would send multiple expiration notifications anyway. You don’t have to transfer your domain name to SiteGround for that. The last one is my favorite as – what I didn’t say yet – there is a transfer fee. The special offer would roughly compensate for that fee.
Why didn’t I transfer my domain back then?
Going back to my modus operandi (see How to podcast?), when I decided on keeping my domain name and web hosting separate, I did gather and read all possible information on the subject matter beforehand:
In this article – apart from using many idioms with the word egg – I acknowledged the convenience, among other advantages, of keeping domain name registration and web hosting together. However, I also explain why registering a domain name with a registrar separate from the hosting provider was the recommended way to go. Hence, after studying every aspect of the problem (in keeping with my modus operandi), I was able to take the most informed decision possible:
I did forgo convenience and decide to keep my domain name and my web hosting separate.
As of the time of this writing, I see nothing that would change that. So, should I transfer my domain to my SiteGround hosting?
The answer is NO!
I don’t blame SiteGround for trying, yet I was annoyed by their ever so slightly pressuring attempt; hence this post. Anyway, while I am at talking about keeping my domain name registered independently:
HAPPY 4th of JULY
1 Not so long after discovering the message on my User Area, I received an e-mail from the SiteGround team stating: we have noticed that you have one or more domains you’re using with your SiteGround account that are currently registered elsewhere
. They were explaining that I could transfer these domains over to SiteGround
, which would enable [me] to conveniently manage all [my] site related services from one place
. ^
2 That is a domain registered somewhere else. For reminder, I chose gandi.net as my registrar. ^