Setting up a domain, email and website is not as difficult as before. In this article we have discussed the advantages of setting up a professional email address and website. We also highlighted the fact that, even though it is an imperative to have a professional email address and website, many small business owners, startups, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs and freelancers have not set these up.
What are the hurdles with setting up a professional email address and website?
There are three major reasons why business owners are still unlikely to get a professional email address and a website:
- The perceived cost of setting up the systems;
- The inconvenience of putting the content together; and
- The cost and inconvenience of keeping the content up to date.
In this article, we will show you how a domain registration and hosting costs as little as R200 once off and thereafter a minimum of R70 a month in hosting fees.
Let us deal with all these concerns.
What does it cost to set up a professional email address and website?
A company that is looking to get revenues of over R10,000 a month should not have a major issue paying for domain registration, hosting, email and a website. In South Africa, we use one of the largest hosting companies in the country that offers the best support to end users. We have registered over 4 domains with this company and are currently hosting all our websites with them. The estimated costs shown in the table below are Afrihost but you can shop around for other hosting companies for comparison.
| Domain Registration | A domain is the name that you give to your website. An example of a domain is yourcompany.co.za; and a web address is www.yourcompany.co.za | R197 | Once-off |
| Domain Renewal | R97 | Annual | |
| Domain Hosting | A shared Linux hosting is the most common, comes with a Control Panel and all the tools required to manage domain, email, hosting, etc. Silver packages is the smallest package and it comes with 1 GB of storage space and 50 email addresses. | R69 | Monthly |
It is important to note that the cost of domain registration depends on the type. For example, a “yourcompany.africa” is R110 and a “yourcompany.org.za” is R97.
If you register a domain and get a hosting package with the same service provider, you usually get offered a discount. Afrihost will give a free domain registration if you opt for a hosting package from their list.
So in summary, a domain registration and hosting costs a minimum of R200 and on average R350, depending on the domain you select. Thereafter it costs a minimum of R70 a month to host. Many small businesses and solopreneurs should be able to easily afford this.
How to set up a Professional Email Address and Website
Let us show you how we set up our email and website without enlisting the services of an IT specialist or consultant.
Essentially, you will need to:
- Get a domain name and a hosting package. Our domain is businessgeniuses.co.za, you will decide what yours should be.
- Sign up for a free professional, secure, encrypted, ad-free email service – we use Zoho Mail
Sign up for a free website development platform – we use WordPress.
All these require very limited tech experience.
A – Email Set up
Step 1: Finalise domain and hosting package
After registering a domain and signing up for a hosting and email package, you normally get a detailed email from your hosting provider that provides detailed information and guidance on setting up email and a website. Along with that you usually get login credentials for your domain’s admin console, usually called a cPanel or Control Panel. Some of the key details that you will get are shown in the email below:
Step 2 – Sign up for a professional email app and connect it to the hosting service
Sign up for the email application (e.g. Zoho mail) and ensure that it talks to your hosting service (example Afrihost) so that you can receive the emails.
In Zoho Mail, this can be completed in the Admin Console as shown below. The ultimate objective is to point your domain’s MX records to your email app.
There are many youtube videos, both on Afrihost and Zoho Mail, that present the step-by-step process on how to complete this setup. It is not complicated at all – but must happen around the same time because the two must be aligned.
Step 3 – Customise your email application
The extent to which your email application can be customised depends on your provider. On Zoho Mail , you can customise:
- Your email accounts. On the free option on Zoho you can have up to 5 email addresses. That means you can set up email accounts such as sales@yourdomain, support@yourdomain, complaints@yourdomain, etc. so that you can prioritise your processes.
- Your email signature and you can make use of dynamic through a richly formatted email with images, tables, hyperlinks, and even smileys.
- Configure tasks, calendar, contacts, etc.
B – Website Setup
Step 4 – Set up the website
We have used WordPress.org for our website and this enabled us to create a site that we have full control over. There are sufficient youtube videos and step-by-step guides on WordPress installation and configuration. WordPress has plenty of templates that can be downloaded and that can be customised. We selected a template called “Blocksy” and used a number of Plugins including WPForms, PostGrid.
Conclusion
Establishing and maintaining a website and email system has become an essential competency for small business owners and entrepreneurs. In our experience, this knowledge grants entrepreneurs direct control over their business’s digital foundation. While outsourcing these tasks might seem advantageous initially, long-term reliance on others can prove problematic. While consulting with a specialized IT firm is an option, the right service providers can be costly. Alternatively, platforms like Zoho offer a user-friendly approach, catering to individuals of varying technical expertise and providing comprehensive support services
Further Information
One of our objectives is to empower small businesses and startups by curating funding opportunities that we come across. Refer to our main page and follow the funding link for other opportunities.
