Simple and Cheap Webhosting without Con Games

[kraftique]

 I used Net firms for a good 15 years just to host my pictures and have simple graphics for my page. I have a webpage with links to my ebay name showing different craft items. It was made in 2004 and never changed. It does work and sends people to my ebay page but I am now not active.

I want to keep my webpage but I do not know anything about webdesign. The page was made up years ago by a family member.

I want to keep my name. Can I park it and decide what to do later or do I need to transfer to a new host.

Net firms is charging me $200.04 this February to renew. 89.98 for the SSL security which I just found is not on my site, and 21.99 for my name. Two cows was the company I original signed up with my web name.

One other thing I want to Bring up. Net firms added unknown to me this year January 3rd an additional website on my account with my name but has it as .online. The customer service person said it is free for year then I have to pay for it. I told him I do not want it and remove it and he said he could not as it has to expire. I see no bill for it until next year of 49.99 listed and web privacy of 14.99 listed for next year. This to me is fraud at the worst!

I told him I never asked for it. Why would a company even do such a thing? I am so angry!

I have 1 website that was suppose to cost 119.88 listed under my account but under renew they list it as 200.04.

I wonder if they added a 2nd account to up the price on an unsuspecting older person who rarely goes into her account?

Anyway anyone can you give an elderly lady heads up on a cheap place to put my name. My daughter uses Go daddy but I read they have some issues.

Any  have any ideas of cheap sites.  I actually would eventually like to add pictures of my work and describe how things were made.  I  am now on a limited income so I really do not want to spend anything more than $60 - 100 a year.

[shipscript]

Some background:

There are two parts to a website:

1) The domain is just a name that is registered, through a registrar, with InterNIC/ICANN. The underlying information is public, so some registrars sell an alias or proxy service to protect the owner's privacy.

2) A web host provides server space for a website (and email) and provides a numerical (Internet Protocol, or IP)  address for finding that site through the Internet. The hosting service can also provide the SSL (secure socket layer) certificate to encrypt communications with the website.

To link the domain name to the hosting service, the domain name and the numerical IP address must be added to a Domain Name Server (DNS).  A website can be moved between different servers at different numerical IP addresses, while the DNS can be updated so the name will point to the new address. The DNS can be updated through the registrar or through the hosting site.

If your site is inactive, the only thing you need to preserve is your domain name, and yes, you can park just the name, or basically, not connect it with any hosting site. 

Additionally, you may want to preserve the content of your website by downloading all of the files to your computer, and thus archive your website pages on your personal computer.

If TwoCows is your registrar, and if they remain your registrar, you can simply close out your NetFirms account and remove your payment methods.  But continue to keep up with your annual domain registration at TwoCows.

However, if NetFirms offered an auxiliary domain, it sounds like your domain hosting may have been transferred from TwoCows to NetFirms. Nonetheless, you can still end just your hosting service and decline renewal of the "free" .online domain. You'll need to check whether your account is set to auto-renew against a credit card, or whether you must manually respond to renewal notices. If you can, turn off auto-renewal and let the unwanted services expire. The cost of $21.99 for a one-year name renewal sounds about right.

GoDaddy is the registrar of many of my domains, and they also put freebies on my account, hoping I'll keep them. However, the free trials do not "auto-renew", so I get monthly notices to renew those auxiliary domains, which I ignore, and the unwanted domains expire and go away. I generally renew my domains for 3-year or 5-year durations.

I did have one website hosted on GoDaddy, which was fine until they switched to Microsoft 365 email hosting, which was not compatible with the mail client I use on my desktop. Microsoft liked to decide which mail I would receive and I got tired of the heavy-handed censoring and decided to move that web hosting over to my local service that was hosting my other websites and email.

There is a list of cheap hosting sites here, but you would need to look into the terms to see what costs kick in after the honeymoon period:

https://us.cybernews.com/lp/best-web-hosting/cheap/

Since your daughter uses GoDaddy, I think I would recommend you do the same so she can offer assistance when you need it.

Fifteen years ago, the combination of domain and cheap hosting was under $100 annually. With today's inflation, $200 annually sounds about right.