Hosting

Willow216

I'm being charged €100 + vat per year for 'hosting account'.

And €40 + VAT for domain renewal each year.

I'm completely clueless when it comes to this stuff, and don't want to ask supplier when i don't know what I'm talking about.

I use G suite (gmail business) for my emails, and squarespace for my website.

What exactly are they hosting?
And if their service is necessary, am I being charged too much?

28064212

If your website is on Squarespace, your supplier may not be hosting anything. Only way to be sure is to actually access your hosting and see what's there (usually done via FTP)

Willow216

Thanks very much for replying.

Yes, and my email is hosted by Gmail/Google?

I've tried accessing my account with them, and I can't really make head nor tail of it.
Buts that's all I have; website & email.

I was using Outlook, but then I set up a G suite account, and the supplier changed the MX record for me.

My understanding was that they now don't host anything for me (since changing from Outlook to gmail) but they charged me again for a years hosting.

Just want to get my facts straight before I query charge.

28064212

They may not host anything, but they almost certainly have provided hosting. If you didn't cancel the hosting, there's no reason they wouldn't continue charging, it doesn't matter whether you're using it or not

PropJoe10

If you have your website with Squarespace but are paying another company for web hosting, then you shouldn't be, because Squarespace will host your site. Your site is everything you see when you open your domain name in a browser.

Domain name hosting is something different. That's just for the registration of the domain name - you don't need to pay two different companies for actual website hosting. Squarespace is a web hosting CMS so if your site is on their platform, that's all you need to pay for that part.

G Suite is separate again, and wouldn't relate directly to either website hosting or domain registration - you'd need to keep your domain registered for that to work, though, as G Suite will link to your domain.

So if you're paying your domain registrar for web hosting as well as paying Squarespace for it, then you are paying too much.

Hope that makes sense! I worked for Squarespace in the past so know how their services work, so feel free to PM me if you need any more insight on that!

niallb

Your hosting account is probably still active and is where you would configure any DNS changes you need to make.
If you were to simply cancel the account, your site and email are likely to stop working.
You should be able to cancel the "hosting service" without any difficulty.

If you transfer the domain you're paying €40 a year for to squarespace, you're likely to get a better price on the renewal.
It would also put the control of that domain into your squarespace account and you could close the ISP account completely.

Be sure you get somebody who understands the process to do this with you or you risk your email being interrupted during transfer.
DNS is the "internet phone book" that tells the internet where to deliver email addressed to your domain as well as acting as the lookup service for your web addresses and other services. There are also a few entries in there which need to be copied to cover spam control and analytics if they are present.
Once done though you've only one bill going forward and a single place to control everything about your internet presence.

The transfer process is outlined here:
https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/206542037

Willow216

Thanks a mil for that info guys.

I asked the supplier yesterday what the hosting was for:

''The hosting account can hold your domain name, website, email account contents, zone records, etc.
In your case it acts as a portal to direct website traffic to your website and email traffic to your email server.
Although your email is on a gmail service and the website is on Squarspace those two services would not work without the hosting account directing traffic from www.xxxxx.ie to the website and the mail.xxxxx.ie to the correct server address.
You cannot have email or a website without a hosting account.
I’m not sure if Squarespace offer hosting solutions''


Sounds exactly like what you described above - they will stop working if I cancel the hosting account.

I've just paid for the hosting by DD for the coming year. I should probably suck it up for now, and just get it all sorted and canceled before the following year is due then.

PropJoe10

Willow216 wrote: »

Thanks a mil for that info guys.

I asked the supplier yesterday what the hosting was for:

''The hosting account can hold your domain name, website, email account contents, zone records, etc.
In your case it acts as a portal to direct website traffic to your website and email traffic to your email server.
Although your email is on a gmail service and the website is on Squarspace those two services would not work without the hosting account directing traffic from www.xxxxx.ie to the website and the mail.xxxxx.ie to the correct server address.
You cannot have email or a website without a hosting account.
I’m not sure if Squarespace offer hosting solutions''


Sounds exactly like what you described above - they will stop working if I cancel the hosting account.

I've just paid for the hosting by DD for the coming year. I should probably suck it up for now, and just get it all sorted and canceled before the following year is due then.

You need to be sure that you and your supplier understand what "hosting" relates to. If you are paying for website hosting to anyone other than Squarespace, you are wasting money.

That said, you need to make sure you continue paying for:

a) Domain registration
b) G Suite

That way, you'll pay Squarespace for the website, and will also keep the site accessible via your domain name. Along with being able to receive email through your G Suite account.

Squarespace does offer domain registration for certain TLD's like .com, .net etc. If your domain name is .ie then you'll need to keep that registered with another party and point it to the site using custom DNS records, which I would assume is what you're doing at the moment.

niallb

PropJoe10 wrote: »

Squarespace does offer domain registration for certain TLD's like .com, .net etc. If your domain name is .ie then you'll need to keep that registered with another party and point it to the site using custom DNS records, which I would assume is what you're doing at the moment.

Exactly.
If it's a .com domain you can add it to your squarespace account for €18.
.ie is not available with them, but are cheaper this year than they've ever been before so any alternative registrar is likely to save you money.

Your provider said you can't have any services without a "Hosting Account", but this is a bit vague. You only need DNS hosting, not Web Hosting or Email Hosting.
That clarification is a reasonable response to their last email.
Ask them are they willing to continue providing you with DNS hosting if you cancel the web hosting package on your account.

If they are not, you should begin the transfer of your domain to somebody else to provide just the DNS services.

You have a web hosting account (the place your website files are kept) with Squarespace which you are using. You also just paid for one with your local provider which you are not using.

You need to pay the domain registration fee to someone which with your current provider is €40. This seems very expensive, so it suggests that it is a .ie domain - they are dearer than .com ones.