🌐Website & DNS Services (Hosting & Components)
Website and DNS services, including hosting and components, are vital for nonprofits, offering a digital presence and reliable infrastructure. These tools facilitate easy website management, ensure seamless hosting, and provide essential features for online visibility.
Domain Registrar & DNS Hosting
Cloudflare
Cloudflare is a free DNS host and offers the lowest prices on the internet for domain registration services. You can purchase a new domain name here, and they have some of the fastest and most reliable services.
Buying A New Domain Name With CloudflareWebsite Hosting & Builders
All these services provide website hosting for nonprofits, and some vendors can host much more than just a website. Some services offer discounts to nonprofits, while others give no discounts.
Choosing the best website builder or hosting platform varies drastically based on your organization's needs. We typically recommend selecting the platform that your content creators will be most comfortable with, which will help ensure the content stays up-to-date and the website remains user-friendly.
All-in-one Website Builders
Wix provides a simple website management platform that's easy to use. Wix offers a discounted rate for nonprofits ($35 per year), which can be purchased from TechSoup. If Cloudflare services like Zero Trust are used, caution should be used when deploying a Wix website to avoid accidentally moving nameservers to Wix.
Google Sites is a free and easy-to-use platform for building simple websites. This option is especially popular with nonprofits needing a simple site without too many features or just starting and needing a landing page.
Squarespace's user-friendly editing interface makes it easy for nonprofits to build and update their website without needing coding knowledge. However, Squarespace doesn't offer specific discounts for nonprofits besides a general first-year discount, and their features might be limited for complex websites.
Website Hosting Providers for WordPress and other Open Source Builders
Good Heart Tech's nonprofit partners receive free WordPress website hosting, training, and website maintenance plan.
All the services below must be manually renewed yearly or when the granted credits run out.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) LightSail – For just $95, purchase a $1000 annual AWS grant from TechSoup. We only recommend this option for technical folks, as it gets pretty involved. The AWS annual renewable grant can be used for almost any AWS service.
Microsoft Azure – Review the instructions to apply for a $2000 annual Azure grant.
Digital Ocean – Offers free cloud services through Holly's Hub for good program.
Linode – Apply for a variable annual grant of cloud services here.
DreamHost - Offers free shared hosting to 501(c)(3)s and 501(c)(19)s. However, we don't recommend this provider because of historical nonprofit validation, support, and billing issues.
WordPress Components & Services
WordPress is a prevalent website content management system that allows for the creation of beautiful and secure websites.
Recommended FREE WordPress Plugins
Google Site Kit allows you to implement modern Google Analytics and Google Search Console integration within minutes.
The SEO Framework plugin provides an easy way to enhance and manage SEO for your WordPress site.
Cloudflare has a WordPress plugin that makes its integration seamless and fast.
Equal Web provides enhanced accessibility options on WordPress sites like a screen reader, magnification, and more.
GiveWP allows website visitors to make donations through payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal.
Updraft Plus is used to back up your website. It can be set on a schedule, so you don't have to worry about losing data.
Fluent SMTP allows for the sending of emails using a plethora of external services, like Microsoft, Google, Brevo, and many more.
Avada
Avada is a WordPress theme that takes the features of WordPress and makes them easier to use and more customizable, and is available for a one-time cost of $70. It includes a drag-and-drop editor and many canned themes to optionally import as a starting point.
Tracking & Ad Services
hotjar
Hotjar offers a free premium account to nonprofits, providing website insights with heatmaps, session recordings, and surveys. It tracks user interactions, visualizes clicks, taps, and scrolling behavior, helping you understand how visitors engage with your site. This data-driven tool empowers informed UX and conversion rate optimization decisions.
Google Ads
Google Ads, available for nonprofits at no cost through the Google Ad Grants program, is an online advertising platform. It enables nonprofits to create and display ads on Google, raising awareness and driving traffic to their causes, all while effectively managing budgets and targeting their desired audience.
Web Hosting Software
cPanel
cPanel offers a free option specifically for nonprofits and serves as a user-friendly control panel, empowering organizations to manage and control aspects of their web hosting environment efficiently. However, due to its robust features, it requires a high level of technical proficiency. We don't recommend this for nonprofits with just one website.
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