Sign in Subscribe
4 min read

So you need an Internet presence for your private practice

Intended audience

This exists for people who are:

  • Professionals with practices
  • That need an internet presence, including a website and email addresses
  • That may want to have an assistant managing emailing and scheduling in the future
  • That may want to build up an audience

Why

This is written for friends and is a central collection of all my thoughts and experience on this. It includes Strong Suggestions and offers some choices.

The problem

For a non-IT person who needs an Internet presence, there are too many options. The world is full of products and services that have upselling built in, wanting more monthly revenue in perpetuity.

The considerations

What is most important to me is:

  • Full control of your email addresses and domain names
  • Set-and-forget website that
    • Loads very, very fast

What is also important:

  • Lowest cost per month
  • Flexibility

What is not important to me:

  • Ease of fundamentally changing the website

What you would need

A domain, and domain provider

Actually, at least two. My Strongest Suggestion is to immediately get you@you.com. Make that your primary identity on the Internet, for everything. @gmail.com was a fine choice as a student. And no more.

Then, get a second domain. you@yourbusiness.com.

That second domain will be an alias for the first.

To your clients, you will be you@yourbusiness.com.
To your friends, you@you.com.

All the email will go to one account, and can be filtered and sorted there.

This allows you to add you@asecondbusinessname.com in the future. It also allows assistant@yourbusiness.com to exist.

An email provider

The email address is not tied to the email provider. That is confusing.

you@yourmanydomains.com can be serviced by any provider. The Obvious ones are Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

Others exist as well, including https://www.hey.com and https://proton.me/mail

Website hosting

This is a space with too many options. The business model is to offer cheap-ish free options, then upsell and ratchet up the price.

It is also monthly, and these costs add up. My belief is that it does not provide the value for the cost.

The sell here is that "normal users" can build their own website, and that is definitely true. For a professional with a practice the bells and whistles are unnecessary extras.

An email list

Yes. This is a choice and a choice I Strongly Suggest you make. It is to keep all the people you ever contacted curated into Your List.

This is especially important to send ad-hoc announcement emails. This is an asset that you do need to grow and garden.

Even if you do not want to. This is important work.

So now what do I do

This is my suggestion, with alternatives that I would not choose. It does require someone with knowledge of these things.

It should not require their attention for more than a few hours a year. This choice gives the most flexibility for future change and growth.

Buy domains from Cloudflare

It is at cost from them:

Use google as your email provider

It is gmail.com, but for your own domains.

The cost is $6 per month per user. So you@you.com and you@yourmanydomains.com stay $6 flat.

You can use Apple Mail and Apple Calendar with this option as well.

This one also integrates tightly with Notion Calendar (see at bottom).

The pricing: https://workspace.google.com/pricing

You also gets Google Meets (and etc) on your domain with this.

Alternatives

If you are deeply in the Apple ecosystem, iCloud with custom domains also works. That requires a iCloud+ subscription. If you already have an iCloud+ subscription, then this is a good choice.

Your email client will be Apple Mail, and your calendar will be Apple Calendar. You cannot use the gmail.com web interface with this option.

Use Hugo or Ghost

Ghost is the choice for website+email list. Hugo is the choice for just-a-website.

Hugo

This one is the best choice for a static, unchanging website that Looks Good and can be made to Look Excellent by any competent web designer.

The cheapest (free) is to choose a theme here: https://themes.gohugo.io and work hard to stay within that theme, with no changes.

Then to host it on https://pages.cloudflare.com

This option goes for the unbelievable price of exactly: $0 (even cheaper in Rands ;-) )

Ghost

You will be paying if you want this. It is the slickest and most integrated: Blog platform, newsletter platform, and mailing list manager.

It is the one I use personally.

For $11 a month, billed monthly, you get:

For $31 a month, you also get:

Alternatives

SquareSpace, Wix. These are not what I would choose, their monthly fee is quite high and the benefits are marginal.

Other things you will also need

The answer is Notion. The question is irrelevant. The reason is:

  • For one person, it is free: https://www.notion.so/pricing
  • It is the best system right now for building databases, keep notes, and just organise yourself and your practice

The killer feature is this one though:

https://www.notion.so/product/calendar

This will save you so much pain and headache. Booking meetings with your client is a 10-second job, that blocks out your calendar with all the options you gave them until they confirm.

My calendar is full of "holds" for where I suggested appointment slots for work, or for personal life. All created in seconds.

I personally cannot imagine life without it.

https://calendly.com is another option to allow clients to book with you, and you may get away with the free plan: https://calendly.com/pricing

Published by:

Danie Roux