So, I started a company a couple years ago, and went with godaddy. I think it was like $5 a month, but I had to pay two years upfront. Meh. Flash forward to now. Back in January I had to pay upfront again. But now godaddy is harrassing me for an additional $200 saying that the other monies I spent earlier were for the "domain name" and now I have to pony up an additional $200 for "web hosting." I know I'm a moron when it comes to this stuff, but is this normal? I loathe being taken advantage of, and this seems a lot like I'm getting hosed. (BTW, the godaddy guy was named "Zach" so I kept telling him he was named after the "Saved by the Bell" character by his mom until he hung up.)
Web hosting is separate from name ownership. Think of your cell phone: you can own the phone number, which is separate than the actual phone. You could have that number apply toward an iPhone or a Samsung phone, or an LG, etc. With a website, you can own the name (which is usually a very cheap service), and you can have other features, too. If you just want to squat on the name, then that's all you pay for. If you want to redirect you mydomain.com name to your facebook page you can do that, with a simple "redirect" fee. Web hosting is where you create some web pages, provide them to a web hosting provider, and they put it on their servers, directing public requests for mydomain.com to your web pages. If you want to a company like GoDaddy (or someone else) to host your website and have all mydomain.com traffic go to that site, you have to pay them for that service. You don't have to use GoDaddy for web hosting. You can use a different company to host your web pages.
I haven't shopped around in a while, so I can't say, really. I used to use GoDaddy - they were a good value. There were cheaper/crappier hosting services out there, and there were expensive/more-than-I-need services out there. But that was more than 10 years ago. I don't host a website now. I suggest you define what your needs are. Ask yourself questions like... How much space will my website take up? Do I need database access? What server-side scripting languages need to be supported? Do I need email services for my domain? If I don't need these now, do I anticipate my website growing such that it will have these needs in the future? Once you have answers to some questions like this, you can shop around for hosting and see which companies offer which features for which prices.
Well, I went to a happy hour and spent my entire website hosting money. The good news is I got a broad that should be here in 20 minutes...
