Quiz: Where should I start my Website?

Choosing between Wix and Squarespace or really knowing the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org is a nightmare. Do the following 3-step-quiz. Think of your needs, and wants, and decide what’s the best option for you. Find out what could be the best option for your small business:

Self-Hosting Your Site Versus Using a Managed Platform

Self-hosting is when you pay a web hosting company to host your website. You pay to save your website’s info in their servers. Kind of like paying rent for the land where you’ll build your house. Just that the website, unlike the house, you can move it to another land anytime you want.

This is the main reason why we prefer self-hosting. WordPress.org is the most popular way to do this. The idea is to build your website from the ground up (or use a builder to help you do that). You rent the land (hosting) but you own the house since the beginning. Everything that you build inside it is completely yours.

On the other hand, you’ve probably already heard of plenty of managed platforms aimed at helping people build their own websites. That’s what Squarespace, Wix, and their counterparts offer. At first, blush, building your own website can sound intimidating. If you don’t have guidance, figuring out hosting and design can seem like a lot. The appeal of managed platforms is side-stepping that confusion. But there are drawbacks as well.

With a managed platform like Wix, you are renting the complete house and land. This means if you want to change something, you basically have to move out. You have to forget about everything you built inside it.

Why We Recommend Small Business to Start a Website with Self-Hosting

Ownership

When using a managed platform like Tumblr to build your website, you don’t own the content on it, the platform does. That means they could shut your site down at any point if they wanted to. You might be thinking that for your small business, to start a website the fast way is the best but sometimes it’s better to invest TIME when money isn’t an option. Managed platforms also don’t give you total control over what to do with your site. You’re bound to run into limitations, whether they’re aesthetic or content-based.

Professionalism is key for A small business

Because of the design limitations when using a managed platform, it can be hard to create a website that looks truly professional. It’s often easy to recognize a SquareSpace site from the design alone – not to mention the platform logo at the bottom of every page. Self-hosting your site frees you from those limitations, takes the platform’s stamp off your site, and gives you total control over how you present yourself on the internet.

Social media profiles are also of huge importance when it comes down to professionalism. Having your branded profile on Instagram, Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, or any other, depending on your industry, makes you seem like an established business. At first, you might think it is too late for opening a new social media profile, it’s not easy to get followers out of the blue. Competing seems impossible, everyone seems to have more than 10k followers already, and growing seems super hard. Well, you should start now and you’ll start growing and get people to follow you. People that believe in what you’re doing and want to support your purpose.

start a website which you can earn money with

If you ever want to run ads on your site for extra revenue, work with brands for paid sponsorships, earn affiliate commissions, or monetize your site in any other way, self-hosting is the way to go. Managed platforms generally won’t let you do this. If you’re thinking “I don’t have plans to monetize, so I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it,” reconsider that logic. If you change your mind, you’ll have to uproot your whole site to make monetization an option.

Getting Over the Hurdle

What we recommend to every small business that wants to start a website is self-hosting through WordPress.org (not WordPress.com, which is a very different service!) via SiteGround. SiteGround makes it easy to host your site and has built-in compatibility with WordPress. It’s also the most economic hosting provider that I know about.

It’s a common belief that self-hosting a site is hard because you need to know how to code but there’s actually an easy solution to this. It all comes down to the theme you choose for your website. Sure, building your own website from scratch takes some coding know-how but if you choose a theme that’s easy to work with, you’re already halfway there.

Divi is the most popular WordPress theme out there. It’s designed to be a user-friendly approach to building your website, so you can put your best face forward and reap the benefits of self-hosting without the intimidation factor of building your whole site from scratch. It’s an easy-to-learn visual builder that provides templates and default settings. This makes everything so much easier when you’re not interested in learning CSS and HTML.

If you’re ready to take your business to the next level, feel free to check out our packages or book a discovery call with us today. We’ll chat about your business’s needs and how we can build on what you’re already doing to make your amazing coaching business the best it can be in the online world. Get ready to thrive!