Domain & Hosting Services
Your website is the single most important marketing tool your business has. More and more companies are recognising the value of a strong online presence, and a website is now an essential part of your corporate image and style, as well as a means of bringing your products and services to both the local and global market.
Sterling IT specialises in creating websites for businesses of all sizes. Our sites are designed to meet each client’s individual needs while remaining clear and easy to navigate. Just as importantly, we make sure the foundations underneath, your domain name, your hosting and your security certificates, are set up correctly from day one, so your site stays fast, available and secure.
Domain Names
Your domain name is your address on the internet and, in most cases, the first thing a customer sees. Getting it right at the start matters, because changing it later is disruptive and expensive.
Sterling IT can help you with:
-
Choosing the right name – checking availability, advising on .com.au , .au, .com, .net.au and newer extensions, and recommending which ones are worth registering defensively to protect your brand.
-
Meeting eligibility requirements – as .com.au and .au domains require a valid ABN, ACN or registered trademark and a genuine connection to the name. We make sure your registration meets auDA’s rules so it isn’t challenged or cancelled.
-
Selecting a reputable registrar – because there is a wide variety of providers and pricing models, and the cheapest first-year offer is often not the cheapest over five years. We’ll steer you toward providers with genuine support and transparent renewal pricing.
-
Ownership and control – so the domain is registered in your business’s name, with your contact details, and you always retain ownership. Too many businesses discover their domain is held by a former web developer or marketing agency.
-
Renewals and expiry protection – where we track expiry dates, enable auto-renewal and registrar lock, and make sure renewal notices reach someone who will act on them. An expired domain can take a business offline in hours.
-
Transfers – so if your domain is currently held somewhere unsuitable, we’ll manage the move to a better provider with no downtime.
Web Hosting
Sterling IT has been setting up and managing hosting services since 1995. We work with a range of hosting providers rather than reselling a single platform, which means we can recommend what genuinely suits your site instead of what suits us.
We’ll help you with:
- Choosing the right platform – whether that’s shared hosting, managed WordPress hosting, a virtual private server (VPS) or cloud hosting. The right choice depends on your traffic, the software your site runs, and how much control you need.
- Sizing it properly – as storage, bandwidth, database limits and PHP versions all vary between plans. We’ll match the plan to your actual requirements so you’re not paying for capacity you don’t use, or hitting limits at your busiest time of year.
- Australian hosting where it matters – since hosting your site locally improves load times for Australian visitors and can be important for data residency requirements.
- Avoiding hidden costs – because many hosting plans look cheap until you add SSL, backups, staging environments or migration fees. We’ll show you the real cost before you commit.
- Migration – moving an existing website from one host to another, including databases, files and DNS changeover, with minimal or no downtime.
- DNS management – configuring and maintaining your DNS records correctly so your website, and any other services pointed at your domain, resolve reliably.
- Backups and recovery – making sure your site is backed up regularly, that the backups are actually restorable, and that you can recover quickly after a failure or compromise.
- Uptime monitoring and ongoing support – so we can monitor your site’s availability and deal with your hosting provider on your behalf when something goes wrong, and you’re not stuck in a support queue.
SSL Certificates
What is an SSL certificate, and do I need one?
An SSL certificate encrypts the data customers enter on your website, including contact forms, credit card details, logins and passwords, so it can’t be intercepted in transit. If you collect financial data, an SSL certificate is mandatory.
In practice, every website now needs one. Modern browsers display a “Not Secure” warning on any site without a certificate, which erodes customer trust immediately, and search engines favour secure sites in their rankings.
Sterling IT can organise and install the right certificate for your site, whether that’s a free automated certificate suitable for most business websites, or a paid certificate with a warranty and organisation validation where you need a higher level of assurance. We’ll also handle:
- Installing the certificate on your website or specific pages as required
- Redirecting all traffic to https:// and fixing mixed-content warnings
- Covering additional subdomains where needed
- Managing automatic renewal, so your certificate never lapses and takes your site down with it
