Guide / hosting
Hosting, domains and who owns them.
Two problems that travel together. First: the bill for hosting a simple site with a few mailboxes looks like one for a far bigger business. Second, and more serious: the domain is registered to the previous developer's details, so formally it is not yours.
What people usually overpay for
A company site with a few pages and modest traffic does not need a package sized for a shop with thousands of products. What it often pays for instead is renewals at list price with no discount, add-ons bought once and never used, and bundles where the part actually in use is one website and three mailboxes.
Who owns the domain — check today
This matters more than the price. If the domain is registered to a supplier rather than to you or your company, you have no practical control over it: in a dispute, or if the supplier disappears, you lose the address customers find you at and the email that runs on it.
Checking takes a moment: registrant details for .pl domains are available through the WHOIS search run by NASK. You care about one field — whether the registrant is your company. If it is not, that needs sorting out regardless of what you pay.
What to do before moving anything
- Establish who the domain registrant is, and where hosting and email actually sit.
- Collect the access: domain panel, hosting panel, mail accounts.
- Back up the site and the mailboxes before anyone switches anything.
- Check when the domain and the SSL certificate expire.
Frequently asked questions
Can moving hosting lose my email?
Badly planned, yes — that is a real risk rather than scaremongering. Done properly, the new configuration is tested before anything is switched, and the old mailbox stays reachable until the new one is known to work.
Does cheaper always mean worse?
No, but cheapest usually means unsupported. For a site that simply has to work, a sensible middle matters more than either extreme.