🌐Website & DNS Services (Hosting & Components)
Last updated
Last updated
Copyright © Good Heart Technology
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.
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 CloudflareAll 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.
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.
Good Heart Tech's nonprofit partners receive free WordPress website hosting, training, and website maintenance plan.
These services allow you to quickly create and host static websites. They are ideal for showcasing information like blogs, portfolios, or simple landing pages without requiring a backend server or advanced technical knowledge.
Cloudflare Pages – Free static site hosting service with global content delivery through Cloudflare's network. Integrates seamlessly with Git repositories.
GitHub Pages – Free hosting for static sites directly from your GitHub repository. Great for developers and projects with open-source components.
These services allow you to host static content or server-based applications and websites. They offer more flexibility than static site builders but often require more technical expertise to set up and manage.
All of 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.
WordPressWordPress is a powerful and widely-used content management system (CMS) that powers over 40% of all websites on the internet. Its flexibility and vast ecosystem of plugins and tools make it an excellent choice for creating professional, secure, and highly customizable websites. Whether you're running a nonprofit, small business, or personal blog, WordPress has something to offer.
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.
Aksimet Antispam offers free licenses to nonprofit organizations, providing effective spam protection for WordPress sites. To get a free license, email Akismet Support at [email protected] with your WordPress.com username and proof of nonprofit status.
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.
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, 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.
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.
