Why don't people keep their domains and hosting all in the same place?

I don't know about everybody else, but for me it was just a cost thing. I haven't touched the domains in a long while, they are set to renew automatically, so it just makes sense to go wherever they are cheapest if I never need to do anything with them after the initial setup.

Could be a number of reasons, but I think it has to do with the prices. They buy cheap domains through sites like GoDaddy and NameCheap and redirect them to their host. That's at least what I do.

I can cheap hosting at XY.com but can get cheaper domains at XX.com.

Mostly it's price, but for me it's also the hosting interface. I don't know what GoDaddy uses now for their hosting interface, but a while back it wasn't Cpanel. It was like dealing with Tripod and Geocities in the 90's.

I have a Godaddy hosting account and buy all my domains from Godaddy also.

I do this for exactly the reason you stated. It's much easier having everything in one place.

Nobody ever mentions this of course, because Godaddys affiliate programme is rubbish.

Godaddy offer 40% of a sale, whereas other companies will offer upwards of $75 for a sign up.

What matters for SEO is to have different IP domain

Jill hit the nail on the head.

I learned that particular lesson the hard way back in 2011.

My preferred domain registrar is Namecheap. I avoid GoDaddy, for reasons explained HERE

I would recommend avoiding HostGator as well. They USED TO BE a reliable hosting provider, but that is no longer the case nowadays. I have been with HawkHost since 2011 and so far have had no issues with their hosting.

Agree with Jill and Jack and Kay.

Another thing I learned when my host went down hard and unexpectedly many years ago: never put your contact email for the host or your domain registrar as an account on your own hosting or domain. For example, yourdomain.com should use another email address for hosting and domain purposes outside yourdomain.com. You can use Yahoo, Outlook, Gmail or whatever you want.

When my host went down my contact email for my domain was through the hosted domain. I forgot my password and so it took forever a day to get it the DNS changed over to a new host because there was no where for the registrar to send a reset password link nor verification email or anything else.

Mark

Two main reasons:

(1) Price - You don't make a bunch of money selling domains. Margins are VERYYY slim so a lot of hosting companies will mark their names up because it's simply not worth their time to offer support when they make make a dollar or two per domain.

A lot of hosting companies also don't want to go to the trouble to offer Privacy Protection. It's a pain in the butt to setup and manage and doesn't fit in with their business model.

Because of this, a lot of people will find the cheapest place to register their names and buy hosting elsewhere.

(2) Paranoia - Some bad apples over the years have made a lot of people paranoid. Horrors stories about ding dongs closing up shop leaving people up in arms about how to access their data/domains lead to overwhelming paranoia about stacking all their eggs in one basket.

I wanted all my stuff in one platform because I own so many domains / websites - so I built my own platform. Sleep much more sound going that route .

Well, I like Godaddy and use it with many .COM, .NET .ORG domains that I have, however for .FR domains I use namecheap because they offer better prices. And of course it is safer not to put all eggs in one basket =)

Definitely price. I pay £17.99 a month for the hosting and domain on one website and it seriously isn't worth it.

Ed, makes no difference.

You can have a prob either way so might has well do what ever you prefer, what ever makes it easy.

There are registrars and there are hosters.

Registrar usually suck in hosting, and hosters usually (almost always) suck in registration.

Plain and simple.

Those of you who ARE keeping your domain registration and web hosting separate for reasons other than those indicated by Jill, Jack & Kay - are doing it for the wrong reasons.

But that's good. At least you ARE keeping them separate.

However, you should go back and read those reasons again so you don't get caught by the short hairs in the future.

Those of you who are NOT keeping them separate...
may just be newbs who took the easy way out, so you should go read the replies by Jill, Jack & Kay again, as well.

Someone mentioned that they have been managing both registration and hosting from the same source for 8 years without issue. I would begin to worry. You're long overdue.

Lastly, there are those of you using GoDaddy for hosting. I don't know what to say... A lot of the worst issues have been worked out, but my past experience with them (working on my client's sites) has been horrendous. I use them for domain registration, but they are the ONLY web hosting company that I actively discourage my customers from using.

I think the main reason is price. Some webhosting companies throw in the domain name for free if you sign up for webhosting for them.

But some webhosting companies will charge you both for the domain and for the webhosting service. At the end of the day, just make sure it's the exact domain you want, and that the webhosting service is good.

I like Godaddy for domains, but not for hosting so that is why I don't use the same provider for both.

Some hosts will play games with you if cancel your hosting account. Some will outright hold it hostage and require exorbitant fees to get control of it, even though I think this is against ICANN rules. 1&1 comes to mind. Terrible, stay away. I have had problems with Blue host and Host Gator in the past as well.

If you find an honest host that is ICANN accredited, has reasonable domain prices, and offers a separate domain control panel from the hosting control panel, it might be OK.

Not all hosts are like this.

For me it was easily the price. Sites like hostgator is around $5 or more per month compared to $21 for a whole year at the hosting site I use. The affiliate commission is not as much as hostgator but I am not worried about that. I have had great experience with mine and great customer service.

I don't see any problem domain + hosting on same site.

i have lost a website in total because i was a few days late paying the hosting - the host wanted a ridiculous fee to put it back online which I felt was taking advantage of an oversight and way beyond a reasonable fee. It felt like blackmail so i let the site and the domain go. I could have avoided that by keeping the hosting and domain separate.