Domains, Web Hosting and Business Email Made Easier
Register your domain, host your website, create professional
email addresses and protect your online presence with help from AldoMedia.
Buffalo, NY based since 1999
One team for domains, hosting and email
Straight answers, no upsell scripts
Disclosure: AldoMedia is an
independent authorised reseller. If you buy through a link on this page we may earn a
commission, at no extra cost to you. The hosting platform, the domain registry and the
certificate authority are run by upstream providers whose full-time job that is. What
AldoMedia does is set the products up properly, support them, and stay accountable for
your account.
What we set up and look after
These go straight to current plans and pricing. Every one of them also has a
page explaining what it does and whether you actually need it, in the menu
above, and we would rather you read that first than buy something twice.
Domain Names
The address people type. What you actually own when you register one, what
the renewal will cost, and how to avoid quietly losing it.
AldoMedia has been designing and maintaining websites for Western New York
businesses since 1999, and that design work still lives at
aldomedia.com. Hosting and domains
were something we managed for clients long before we offered them on their
own, which shapes how this side of the business works.
Patch cables behind a server rack, the network layer where hosting, domains and business email meet.Kim Scarborough from Chicago, IL, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped.
When you call about a domain that will not point to the right place, you are
talking to people who build websites for a living, not to a script.
One place for the whole stack. Domain, hosting, email and
certificate under a single account instead of four vendors and four logins.
We will tell you what you do not need. Plenty of businesses
are sold add-ons that solve a problem they do not have.
Real setup help. DNS records, email migration and pointing a
domain at an existing site are the parts people get stuck on. Ask us.
Local and reachable. Buffalo office, a phone number that a
person answers, and a contact form that reaches the team directly.
Web hosting
Pick hosting by what your site does, not by the biggest number
Hosting plans are usually sold on storage and bandwidth. For most
small business sites, neither is the thing that will limit you.
Shared hosting
Your site shares a server with other sites. It is the right starting point for
brochure sites, local service businesses and anything with steady, modest
traffic. Cheapest to run and simplest to manage.
Good fit: a 5 to 30 page business site.
WordPress hosting
Shared hosting tuned for WordPress, usually with the software, updates and
caching handled for you. Worth it if your site runs WordPress and nobody on
your team wants to think about plugin updates.
Good fit: a WordPress site you update yourself.
Business hosting
More dedicated resources than a shared plan, without running your own server.
The usual reason to move up is a store, a busy site, or an application that
got slow on shared hosting.
A domain is the only part of your online presence that is genuinely hard to
replace. Hosting can move, a design can be rebuilt, but the name your
customers know, your printed materials show and your email runs on is
yours only while the registration is current.
That is why the domain-side work worth doing is unglamorous: keep it renewed,
keep the contact details reachable, keep it locked, and keep the registrar
account under the business's control rather than a former employee's.
Register or transfer a name, including moving one that is
currently sitting at a registrar you would rather not deal with.
Domain privacy keeps your name, home address and phone
number out of the public WHOIS record.
Registrar lock stops a transfer being started without your
explicit approval.
DNS management so the domain can point at your site,
your email and any other service at the same time.
Your domain, your address. name@yourbusiness.com instead of
a free address that makes a real company look temporary.
The business keeps the mailbox. When someone leaves, you
still control the account and the mail history.
Works with what you already use. Phone mail apps, Outlook
and webmail all connect to the same mailbox.
Migration is the hard part. Moving existing mail without
losing anything is where most people want a hand. That is fine, ask.
Business email
A free email address quietly costs you work
Customers notice. A quote that arrives from a generic free address gets read
differently to one from name@yourbusiness.com, particularly for trades,
professional services and anything involving a deposit.
There are two common routes: straightforward mailbox hosting on your domain,
or Microsoft 365 if you also want the Office applications and shared
calendars. Which one is right depends on how your team already works.
An SSL certificate proves the connection is private
It encrypts what passes between a visitor's browser and your site and removes
the "not secure" label browsers show otherwise. Every site needs one now,
including sites that only have a contact form.
What it does not do is stop your site being hacked. It is about the
connection, not the software.
Website security protects the site itself
Scanning for malware, cleaning up an infection, blocking bad traffic and
keeping restorable backups. This is the part that matters if an out-of-date
plugin gets exploited.
If you take one thing: a working, tested backup solves more real emergencies
than anything else on the list.
AldoMedia, LLC is at 656 North French, Ste 2 in Buffalo, and has been
working on Western New York websites since 1999. If a domain will not resolve or
email stops arriving, call 716-771-2536 or use the contact form and a person on
the team picks it up.
We are honest about hours: this is a working web company, not a
24-hour help desk. Urgent problems get attention quickly during business hours,
and the platforms behind the products run their own support behind us.
You have a business name and nothing else online. You need the domain, a place
to put a site, and email on that domain, in that order.
Businesses inheriting a mess
The domain is registered to a designer who has moved on, nobody knows the
login, and renewal notices go to an address that no longer exists. This is
fixable, and it is a common call.
Businesses consolidating
Domain at one company, hosting at another, email somewhere else, three
renewal dates and no single bill. Moving it together makes it manageable.
Contractors and trades
A simple site that loads fast on a phone, an email address that looks
professional on a quote, and nothing you have to babysit.
Professional practices
Law firms, medical offices and accountants where the domain, the certificate
and mailbox control are matters of client confidence.
Other web designers
If you build sites and want somewhere sensible to put client domains and
hosting, that works too. Talk to us about how you prefer to bill.
How it works
What actually happens when you get started
Check the name is free
Search the domain you want. If it is taken, the search suggests alternatives,
and it is usually worth taking the closest sensible one rather than a long
hyphenated version nobody will type correctly.
Register it, with privacy on
Register the domain in the business's own name, at an email address the
business controls. Turn on domain privacy so your contact details stay out of
the public record.
Add hosting and email
Choose a hosting plan that matches what the site will do, and add mailboxes on
your domain. These can be bought at the same time or added later.
Point everything at the right place
DNS records tell the internet where your website lives and where your email
should go. This is the step people most often want help with, and it is the
step where a small mistake takes email offline.
Install the certificate and go live
Add the SSL certificate so the site loads over HTTPS without warnings, check
the site and email both work, and put the renewal dates somewhere you will
see them.
Do I need hosting if I already have a domain name?
Yes, if you want a website at that address. A domain name is the address
people type; hosting is the space the website files actually live in. You can
keep a domain registered on its own without hosting, which is common when a
business is holding a name for later or only pointing it at email.
Can I move my existing domain or website to AldoMedia?
In most cases yes. Domains can usually be transferred once they are more than
60 days old and unlocked at the current registrar, and existing sites can
normally be copied across. Get in touch before you start and we will tell you
what is involved for your specific setup.
What is business email and why not just use Gmail?
Business email uses your own domain, so you are name@yourbusiness.com instead
of a free consumer address. It reads as more credible to customers, it keeps
the mailbox under the company's control rather than one person's personal
account, and it stays with the business when staff change.
Does every website need an SSL certificate?
In practice, yes. Browsers mark sites without a certificate as not secure,
which visitors see before they read a word of your page. Any site that
collects a form submission, a login or a payment needs one, and search
engines expect HTTPS as standard.
Where is AldoMedia based?
AldoMedia, LLC is at 656 North French, Ste 2, Buffalo, NY 14228, and has been
building and supporting websites for local businesses since 1999. You can
reach the team at 716-771-2536 or through the contact form.
Guides
Work out what you need before you buy it
Plain explanations of the terms that get thrown around during
signup, written for business owners rather than developers.
Domain Name vs Web Hosting
The single most common point of confusion, and the reason people end up paying
twice for the same thing or wondering why their domain shows a blank page.
Everything else can be added later, but the domain is the piece worth securing
today. Search for it now, or tell us what you are trying to do and we will point
you at the right service.
