Simplicity is a wonderful thing. For the domain name game and hosting services, there are two kinds of simplicity

• A single, monolithic simplicity - aka "all-in-one"
• A set of modular simplicities - aka "best-of-breed"

At this stage in web hosting and Domain name registration and DNS service offerings, the second form of simplicity is the preferred approach to dealing with domain registration, DNS service provision and hosting service providers.

Three Services - Three Service Providers

The current approach we take at Chiangmai SEO is to manage service providers at each level of service provision: domain registration, DNS services, and hosting providers. In our graphic there are two main application hosting providers: email, messaging, document sharing and collaboration on the one hand (Google Apps for Domains) and web/db/ftp hosting on the other (Hostmonster)

Domain Name Registration

• They register and manage the domain nameserver pointers (NS records) that are registered with the 13 top level DNS servers
• The customer indicates and can change which nameservers to use, based on who the preferred DNS service provider is
• Cost is approximately $10/year/domain, with per year or multi-year registration
• Our preferred Doman Name Registrar is 101domain.com ($9.95/year for generic domains)

DNS Service Provision

• They manage the servers and record entries which point to various services that are hosted at various addresses, including email, web, ftp, jabber, etc.
• The customer can create and change all the various entries to point to different servers or service providers depending upon what application hosting services they have with service providers (email, web, etc.)
• Cost is from $0 to $10.95/year/domain or $0 to $5/month/account
• Our preferred DNS service provider is editdns.net ($5/month for unlimited domains, free for limited domains)

Application Hosting Service Providers

• They manage one or more of the servers which offer particular services, and provide client management interfaces
• At this level, each application can be considered a unique offering which then uses the best-of-breed approach at a finer level, which enables the use of individual service providers for each service needed, such as email, web, application development, etc.
• The customer then can individually manage the configuration and content delivered by each given application
• Cost is from $0 to $200/year depending on service.
• Our preferred email, chat and cloud-based document sharing and collaboration service provider is Google Apps for Domains, with the standard version free a premiere edition currently at $50/mailbox
• Our preferred web/db/ftp service provider is Hostmonster for about $84/year
• We currently do not offer consulting or management services for application development environments which use cloud-based repositories or grid-based APIs and virtual server management (Amazon, Google, etc.)

Update 2009-09-22 I ran across Yoast's post on WordPress hosting, interesting discussion.

Related posts:

1. SEO Domaining 101 - Keywords in Domain Names = High Google SERP Ranking Two recent anecdotes underline the importance for SEO of keywords...
2. Link-building, domaining and why your domain name needs keywords We have been preparing a few linkbuilding campaigns which includes...
3. International SEO - Geotargeting, TLDs, Hosting Location, Languages International SEO has its own unique challenges. One aspect is...