Should I buy a domain name? Can a business use Google Apps Standard (free) Edition?
I think I’ve decided on a name for my new business, and Google Apps tells me that the domain name I like is available for $10. Should I go ahead and buy it through them? Also, they indicate that the standard edition is for non-professional organizations and that businesses should use the Premier ($50/yr) Edition. Is there any reason I shouldn’t use the free edition?
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Looking at the Google Apps site, it doesn’t seem to me that there’s any reason you shouldn’t use the free edition. I think the business edition just has a lot more support for businesses that have multiple employees and need a lot more infrastructure – all you really need is a simple website and an email address, which the free edition should handle just fine.
$10 is a reasonable price for registering a domain name for one year, so I don’t see any reason not to buy it through google. I didn’t see the stuff about domain names when I was looking, but if they say you can build a google site with your own domain name, then go for it!
The only thing to consider is that, from what I’ve heard, you have less flexibility with customizing a google site than you would if you were to build the site somewhere else (I use wordpress for mine, but there are many others). If you were to do it elsewhere, though, you’d have to pay for hosting if you wanted your own domain name, and hosting runs about $70/year. You could have a site called yourbusiness.wordpress.com for free, but if you wanted it to just be yourbusiness.com, you’d have to pay for hosting.
Does that make any sense?
Since it’s free, I’d go ahead and try setting up a site on google – if you can’t make it do what you want it to, then you could consider the other options, but you might as well start with the cheap option first! =)
What did you decide to call the business?
I would check for your domain at name.com because they seem to be a couple dollars cheaper there. plus they come with Google apps and decent tech support.
Ultimately, you will want to upgrade your site from Google apps, but it seems like an okay place to start. How many pages are you planning to have on the site? A static informational site would be easy to host someplace else for a few dollars a month and would give the flexibility of design.
The big difference is the customization, as sdeutsch mentioned, and the cost of programming the site.
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