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Guides for Small Business Owners

Plain answers about domains, hosting, email and security. No jargon you do not need.

All Guides

Guide

The Small Business Website Checklist

A good local business website is owned by you, loads securely on phones, makes it easy to call or book, and gets checked on a regular schedule.

Guide

Why Your Web Hosting Renewal Price Jumped

A web hosting renewal price is usually much higher than the sign up price, because the low price only covered your first term. Check the bill, cut add ons you do not use, then decide whether to renew, change plans or move.

Guide

How Much Does Website Maintenance Cost in 2026?

A small business website can cost as little as about $144 a year in cash to keep online, plus your time. A builder plan like Squarespace runs about $348 a year. The biggest cost is often the hours, not the bills, so price the time before you pick a plan.

Guide

Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365 for Small Business (2026)

In October 2026 the two cost the same. Both start at $7 a user a month on a yearly plan and $8.40 on a monthly one. So pick on how your team works. Pick Microsoft 365 if you need Word and Excel installed on a computer. Pick Google Workspace if your team lives in Gmail and the browser.

Guide

Squarespace vs Wix for Small Business (2026)

Pick Squarespace if you want a clean site fast and plan to sell online. Pick Wix if you want to place every box yourself or need a free plan to start. On October 13, 2026 the middle plans both listed at $29 a month on a yearly plan. Wix was cheaper in year one only because of a sale.

Guide

Why Google Won't Index Your Pages

Google leaves a page out of its index for a reason, and Search Console tells you which one. Discovered but not crawled usually means too little crawl demand. Crawled but not indexed usually means the page adds too little. The fix depends on which it is.

Guide

Domain vs Hosting Explained for Business Owners

A domain is your address on the web and hosting is the computer that stores your website. You need both for a site, and you can buy them from the same company or from two different ones.

Guide

What Happens When Your Domain Expires

When a domain expires, your website and email stop working soon after, but you usually still have time to renew. Under ICANN rules you get reminders before the date, a window to renew after it, and often a 30 day restore period after that.

Guide

How to Find Out Who Owns a Domain and Who Hosts It

Look up the domain at lookup.icann.org to see its registrar and dates. Owner details are often hidden for privacy, so the registrar is your main lead. A DNS lookup then shows who hosts the website and who runs the email.

Guide

.com vs .net for a Small Business

Pick the .com if you can get it. Both endings work the same and rank the same, but customers type .com out of habit, so a .net name can send some visitors and email to someone else.

Guide

Do I Need a Website for My Business?

Most local businesses do need a website, even with a Google Business Profile and social pages. It is the one place online you fully own, and it answers the questions customers check before they call. A small, fast site is usually enough.

Guide

How Much Does a Domain Name Cost in 2026?

A normal .com domain costs about $11 to $23 a year to keep, depending on where you buy it. The first year is often cheaper, so compare the renewal price. No registrar can sell a .com for less than about $10.46 a year without losing money, and that floor goes up on November 1, 2026.

Guide

502 Bad Gateway: What It Means and How to Fix It

A 502 Bad Gateway means one server in the chain asked another server for your page and got back a broken answer. It is almost never the visitor's fault. If it is your site, the fix is on your host, your CDN or your site's code, and the fastest path is usually a short message to your host with the time, the page and what you changed.

Guide

Your Connection Is Not Private: How Site Owners Fix It

Your Connection Is Not Private means the browser could not trust the certificate your site showed it. If one visitor sees it, check their clock and their Wi-Fi. If everyone sees it, the fix is yours. The certificate is expired, made for a different name, or signed by nobody the browser trusts.

Guide

Not Receiving Emails at Your Business Address? Start Here

If mail to your business address stops, test it from another account and read the bounce. A bounce with a reason means the problem is on your side, usually a full mailbox, a missing address or an MX record that points nowhere. No bounce and no mail usually means spam, a filter or a forwarding rule.

Guide

IMAP vs POP3 for Small Business Email

Use IMAP. It keeps your mail on the server, so your phone, laptop and office computer all show the same inbox. POP3 downloads mail to one device and, by default, deletes it from the server. Pick POP3 only if one computer is the only place you ever read mail and you back it up.

Guide

How to Fix a 503 Service Unavailable Error on Your Site

A 503 means the server is up but has said it cannot serve the page right now. It is either overloaded or in maintenance mode, and on a small site it is often your own site that sent it. Find out who sent the 503, clear that cause, and keep any planned downtime to hours, not days.

Guide

Free Business Email at Your Own Domain: What Still Works

Yes, but only one option is a real free mailbox. Zoho Mail's Forever Free plan gives up to 5 people an inbox at your own domain, read in a browser or Zoho's app. The rest are forwarders that only receive, trials that turn into a bill, or addresses on someone else's domain.

Guide

Wix Domain vs Your Own Registrar: What Year Two Costs

A Wix domain is fine, but it is not cheap after year one. Wix lists a .com at $7.90 the first year, or free with a yearly plan, and $21.35 a year to renew. An at cost registrar charged about $11 in October 2026. You can buy the domain elsewhere and still run the site on Wix.

Guide

Fix This Site Can't Be Reached on Your Own Business Site

When your own site shows This Site Can't Be Reached for everyone, the fault is almost never the visitor's Wi-Fi. Read the code under the message. A name error points at your domain or DNS, and a refused or timed out connection points at your host. Fix the one the code names.

Guide

Fully Qualified Domain Name: What FQDN Means in Your DNS

A fully qualified domain name, or FQDN, is the complete name of one host in DNS, like www.yourgarage.com. Strictly written, it ends in a dot for the root. As an owner you type FQDNs in your mail and alias records, and a wrong one there can quietly stop your email.

Guide

Squarespace vs WordPress for a Small Business Site

Pick Squarespace if you want one bill and no updates to manage. Pick WordPress if you want to own every file and someone will keep the plugins and server current. In our October 25, 2026 check of 1,244 small business homepages, 322 ran on WordPress and 48 on Squarespace.

Guide

Wix vs WordPress for a Small Shop: 567 Real Sites Compared

Pick Wix if you'll build and edit the site yourself and never want to think about a server. Pick WordPress if you want to own every file and someone will keep the plugins current. On 567 small business homepages we loaded on October 28, 2026, the Wix sites came back faster, but they were missing a tap to call link almost three times as often.

Guide

How to Fix an Email That Bounced Back, Code by Code

Read the code in the bounce before you do anything else. A code that starts with 5 is a permanent failure, so sending it again won't help. One that starts with 4 is temporary, so your server will keep trying. A 7 in the middle, like 5.7.26, usually means your own domain's mail records need fixing.

Guide

Domain Name Value: Who Would Pay for Yours and How Much

To a buyer, most small business domains are worth close to nothing, because the names that sell for real money are short, generic words. To you, the same domain can be worth a lot, because your email, your printed cards and every link to your site run through it. Price the second number before you answer any offer.

Guide

Website Down Message to Customers: 7 Templates to Copy

Tell customers three things in plain words. The site is down, how to reach you right now, and when you expect it back. Put that on the down page itself, then send the same note to anyone with a booking. Ask your web person to serve that page with a 503 code, so Google treats the outage as short.

Guide

How to Check How Old a Domain Is, and When the Date Lies

Look the domain up at lookup.icann.org and read the created date. That's the day the current registration began. Then search the name in the Wayback Machine. If its oldest saved page is years older than that created date, the name was dropped and bought again, and the site you see now may have a different owner.