Online business management and tech expertise from the At Your Service Cincinnati team

Convenience: many online services fully understand its importance. The ease with which you can set up an account, install a web site, create a social media identity, and scores of other online activities, is what draws us in. WordPress touts their “Famous 5 Minute Install,” for example, while many sites say things like “You’re less than 30 seconds away from getting started.”  Make life easy – install and move on along with your work – is tempting because we all have so much busy-ness.

There is a danger in putting all your eggs in one basket, however. If, at some point in the future, you become disenchanted with the service, installation via the “easy route” may come back to bite you. This is why I recommend not purchasing your domain name from your hosting company, as an example. If the host has a catastrophic failure, if service becomes dismal, or another issue has made living with your web host a pain that you don’t wish to further endure, having your domain at a separate registrar allows you to quickly select the new host of your choice, redirect your domain, and move forward. If both your domain and your host are managed by the same company, separation may be more difficult and complicated. As a personal example, a domain name that I purchased via the hosting company (and I should have known better!) has now become a royal pain to transfer, with two failed transfer attempts to date.

Email is the same way. I have a number of different email addresses that I use and manage for my various clients. The concept of a universal webmail inbox is convenient and helpful to me – all my stuff in one place.  When I recently became increasingly frustrated with Gmail, I began searching for alternate solutions. Once my solution was selected, I realized much more fully just how many hooks, wires, tricks, and filters I had set up in my Gmail universal webmail inbox. Transition is almost complete to my new solution, but not without a great deal of pain.

The point to my op-ed is this: the gratification that you get from using the “speed” installation of an application or service will only be as long-lived as your love affair with the solution. When that dwindles, or is replaced by the new bigger, better thing, you will instantly be reminded of why a more thoughtful implementation might have been a better choice.

{ 0 comments }