Is Google Apps good for hosting a domain business?

[krx]

I have been buying names for months and am now gearing up to start selling. I will be seeking endusers for a lot of my names. I think it would be good to have a professional web page/site both to represent the business and to show the names. I have a business name and have regged the corresponding domain. The domain is at name.com where they offer Google apps for free.

Now here's where the going gets rough. I have never built a web page, let alone a site with multiple pages. I don't know the first thing about how to do it. However, from what I can tell, Google apps pretty well walks you through step by step. So here's what I'm wondering:

Is it realistic that a guy with no knowledge or experience in web development can build a good basic web site with Google apps? Would I be better off getting professional help? Would I be better off hosting the domain/business elsewhere?

For all my domaining accounts (registrars, auctions, parking, forums, ebay, paypal, etc) I want to shift over to using the email associated with the business/domain, which apparently is offered as part of Google apps. Is gmail suitable for this purpose? Any reason not to do this?

I don't want to waste a lot of time building a site that isn't going to be suitable for these purposes. So any feedback would be much appreciated!

 

[hyped]

Google Apps should be more than enough based on what you've mentioned that you want to do. Just to note, though, Google Apps is free, so unless name.com is giving you the premiere version for free, it's something that you can sign up for and use without their help (look at http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/editions.html).

You are definitely more than capable of creating your pages and hosting your email with gmail by yourself using Google Apps, and in your situation I would suggest it rather than paying for professional help.

I would go ahead and try it and see if you're happy with the results. It's free, so there is no harm in trying.

 

[tricolorro]

Google Apps should be more than enough based on what you've mentioned that you want to do. Just to note, though, Google Apps is free, so unless name.com is giving you the premiere version for free, it's something that you can sign up for and use without their help (look at http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/admins/editions.html).

You are definitely more than capable of creating your pages and hosting your email with gmail by yourself using Google Apps, and in your situation I would suggest it rather than paying for professional help.

I would go ahead and try it and see if you're happy with the results. It's free, so there is no harm in trying.

:hi:

Google Apps may be free but I'd like to point out that Name.com has been offering domain registrations for $5.99.

It's very likely that Google is offering some kind of $ incentive to Name for offering and/or getting their customers to use the Google Apps.

Since $5.99 is below cost for most domain extensions ,I hope their customers will use Google Apps through Name instead of going direct.

After all, there's no benefit to going direct but those of us using Name.com are benefiting by the excellent pricing.

Patrick

 

[krx]

Thanks! I'm going to give it a try. Anybody care to post links to your own domaining business sites? Or know of some good ones? I'd like to see some models.

Also, what about templates? Are there any good templates for a domain business/sales site?