Best Website/Domain Host

Has anyone out there had much to do with this sort of thing?

Am looking at creating a website as part of my plan for Total World Domination. Have googled website hosts and it seems that GoDaddy is quite reasonably priced.

Thoughts?

If this is in service of your photographic business definitely consider using an out of the box package instead of creating something you'll need to maintain.

I thoroughly recommend: https://www.squarespace.com/

Oh I never considered my photography business. Was more thinking about promoting my Strip Pole Yoga business.

I shall check it out for both :-)

http://www.iwantmyname.com is a Wellington based domain seller who is rated as one of the best in the business, so I recommend them. Otherwise Hover, definitely not godaddy.

As far as hosting goes, it depends what you want. We run several thousand sites on http://www.digitalocean.com, the cheapest plan there is $5USD a month and they have all the CMSs, etc. The best customer service in the world is from a company called http://www.rimuhosting.com/ although they're a little expensive as they are based in Morinsville.

If you want a site which is a blog type thing rather than a shop type site, then I'm going to pimp my work http://www.ghost.org

Will back Smithy up on his Squarespace suggestion. Really great templates, easy to use. If you want a .co.nz you'll need to register that separately but easy enough once you have it to use it on your squarespace. 

If you're looking for an ecommerce platform, look at shopify or big cartel. Easy to create a blog on Shopify as well.

A colleague has recommended 1stDomains.nz to me.

Anyone had any experience with them?

I used to use them, they're pretty generic. If you want to support a nz domain host iwantmyname.com is better as they offer more features and throw in what other services charge extra for.

To be honest I am looking for No Frills bvut won't argue with getting more for my money.

Ideally would like a contact based in NZ to deal with any issues that I might have along the way.

iwantmyname is wellington based, honestly they are one of the best domain registrars on the planet - and that's not some sort of pro Wellington BS it's the truth. The company I work for is European based and they use them for all their domain stuff and have been recommending them to their customers for years.

That's a domain registrar though, they don't do hosting.

For your hosting you really can't beat digital ocean, they're not NZ based but you'll struggle to find a cheap host which has NZ servers. Digital Ocean charges $5 USD per month for a server that will do what you want. If you click this link

https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=18e29544e0c2...

you get $10 in free credits.

iwantmyname is absolutely the best choice for domain host. They are amazing at everything they do - and support is great here in NZ coz it's instant.

Whooohooo!

Website domain registered today. Stay tuned for when I get my shark together and go LIVE!!!

Looks like you're live already!