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.
On this page
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.
Put it into practice
One page recording where everything lives
Gather this before changing providers. Do not enter passwords here — you only need to know who has access and where the account is held.
Ticks are only for use on this page and are not submitted. Check renewal price, care scope and account ownership separately.
Clarity about access and responsibility is the first result of a review.
See how I take over website careHosting mess / ZmieńWWW
Is the mess the hosting itself?
Site with one provider, email with another, the domain with a third and an expired certificate — that is a specific job, and I run a separate service for it. Describe what you have and you will get an answer on whether moving it is even worth doing.
Describe your case at ZmieńWWWZmieńWWW is my second project. No obligation.
Questions before we start
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.
Read next
Moving a site from a previous developer.
How to recover domain, hosting and code — and not lose your Google positions in the move.
Why your website is slow.
The usual causes of a slow site — and which of them actually affect customers.
Hosting and care.
Hosting, backups, updates — and someone who answers when something breaks.