Custom domain + Email
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Hello,
Very new to WordPress so apologies for the newbie question.I volunteer with a charity who use a WordPress site.
We want to get a custom domain name and custom email addresses.
Is it best to do this all through WordPress or buy the name elsewhere and link?
Do we need to get a business plan or can the custom domain be linked to a free account?
Email addresses:
I see WordPress allows five forwarded email addresses. Is that just the free account and is there a way to get more than five with a business plan?Is there a way with a business plan to allow email addresses as part of the wordpress site so they’re not forwarded to another account i,e you reply from the custom address as opposed to from your gmail? (and more than five?)
Many thanks for your help. We’re not the most techy so just trying to figure out what we need in the easiest and cheapest way. We’re happy with the WordPress site and don’t want to move it but just want to make it look more professional by custom name and emails!
thanks!!
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Hi and welcome to WordPress!
You can buy your custom domain here on WordPress.com and to use it with your site you will need any paid plan (Personal, Premium or Business). Each plan comes with a free domain name credit for one year of registration.
There are some domains that are not available for purchase on WordPress.com and if you want to get one of those you will have to buy it elsewhere and use Domain Mapping to connect it to your site.
See here for full list of supported domains:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/domain-pricing-and-available-tlds/And this page will tell you all you need to know about registering a domain on WordPress.com:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/register-domain/As for email, if you want full email hosting (not just forwarding) you can connect another provider to your custom domain. WordPress.com doesn’t offer email hosting but for domains registered through WordPress.com, you will be able to purchase a G Suite account during sign up.
You can also use any other email hosting you choose (Zoho, Outlook, Fastmail…) and connect that email to your custom domain. You can find about setting up email hosting with your WordPress.com site here: https://en.support.wordpress.com/add-email/
I hope this will help you. If you have any other questions, just let me know and I’ll be happy to help.
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Thank you for the information.
Unfortunately the domain I need is not one of the ones listed.
I have been in touch with a hosting provider who can supply the domain and they also offer a “WordPress Hosting” plan where they can move the site to their servers, link it to the domain and provide email as part of the hosting.Is this something that’s common/recommended?
Would we still need to pay WordPress for a paid plan to link the domain then?
Also as this site is for a registered charity, do WordPress offer free or discounted plans?
many thanks again. It’s all very confusing :)
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I’m happy to help :-)
You can move your site away from WordPress.com to your hosting provider (that is usually referred to as self hosted WordPress or WordPress.org). It is quite common, and in some cases, it is the best solution. You will have to decide if that is the best option for you.
I will try to give you some explanation about the difference s between hosting your site on WordPress.com and using WordPress software and hosting it somewhere else.
WordPress.com site and self-hosted WordPress are the same software. The difference is that on WordPress.com site the technical details such as backups, upgrades, security are taken care of whereas, with self-hosted WordPress, you usually have to do that by yourself. Some hosting providers offer additional services that cover some or all of these technical bits but in most cases, such offers are more expensive, and you still have to have some technical knowledge to work with your site.
The upside of self-hosted WordPress is that you have more flexibility in what you can do with your site. You can install any plugins and themes you want (on WordPress.com you need a Business plan to do that) and change them as you see fit. But again, you need some technical knowledge for that, or you will have to hire someone to do that for you. Also, when things go wrong you will need to know who to ask for help, the theme author, plugin author or hosting provider (or all of them :-) )If you want to learn more about the differences between these two approaches to WordPress, please see these pages:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/
https://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/11/14/com-or-org/So I would say you have these options:
Option 1
Register your domain where you can.
Upgrade your WordPress.com site to at least Personal plan (so you can use it with your custom domain).
Use Domain Mapping to connect the domain and your WordPress.com site.
For email, you can buy email hosting (GSuite or Zoho Mail for example). I believe Zoho Mail has free email hosting for personal emails that you could use, but even their paid plans aren’t expensive.One warning, this option will not be possible if the domain you want to get contains language-specific characters such as ä, û, ע, ж, 字, मा. In that case, you will need to use self-hosted WordPress.
Option 2
The other option is you register your domain with your hosting provider and move your site from WordPress.com.
If your hosting provider is not covering things like backup or security, I will recommend installing Jetpack plugin that can help you with those.
Learn more about WordPress. There are some fantastic resources for all levels of knowledge available all over the internet.
You will get your email hosting in your package.
You don’t have to pay for anything on WordPress.com.And to answer your last question, WordPress.com has no discounted plans for charity.
I hope I managed to explain the differences and help you make your decision.
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