A website for a one-person company: domain, DNS and hosting

The domain is the asset

Register it in an account only you control, with auto-renew and two-factor authentication on. A domain can be moved between registrars and pointed at any host, so where you buy it does not decide anything else.

DNS in front of everything

With Cloudflare as the nameserver and the site's records proxied through it, the origin server's address stays hidden, TLS certificates are issued and renewed for you, static files are cached at the edge, and firewall and bot rules apply before a request reaches the host. It is also where the mail records (MX, SPF, DKIM) live.

Managed hosting or your own server

Hostinger sells shared and managed WordPress hosting with a site builder: you look after the content, they look after the server. DigitalOcean sells cloud servers, managed databases and an app platform that deploys from a repository: you administer the machine and pay by the hour. The choice is how much you want to run yourself, not which is better.

What goes where

• The domain at the registrar.
• Nameservers at Cloudflare.
• The site at the host.
• Mail at a mail provider, never on the web host: deliverability is its own job.

Before you launch

Backups you have tested restoring, one redirect between www and the bare domain, HTTPS on every page, and a contact page and a privacy page that say who runs the site.

All the tools, by category: Tools for a one-person company.