@gadgetgav @molly0xfff

As an ISP, let me chime in: No, not necessarily. Just avoid any form of vendor-lock in (eg: onepage, wix, ...). Given your question, I assume, you are not overly tech-savvy.

you are also fine running a cheap virtual host or virtual server. It's also OK, if you use the hosting-companies SQL-Server for your CMS (I suggest you do, so no hassle for you with patching, upgrades and security stuff). Important is, that you have means to 'dump' the stuff and move it somewhere else.

Point is: use your own (domain-) name, so u can move your emails and or content somewhere else, with a limited amount of hassle.

So: No vendor-specific stuff. They will prey on u, as they can guesstimate what a move will cost you, and calculate from there how to extract the maximum amount of money from you.

Hosting with a hosting-company is perfectly fine, as long as you don't use their special-sauce, which will run exactly only on their servers.
And if you are using CMSs - by the love of god, limit the amount of plugins. The ideal amount is 0, for that matter, and before you ask.

@gadgetgav

It’s a valid concern. Ultimately you *can* still be shut down. But it’s a lot harder. There are many DNS providers out there (And GoDaddy is frankly one of the worst IMO). There’s only one Facebook provider.

You *can* move your own website to other providers for a long time before you run out of options.

@czauner @molly0xfff

@gadgetgav Sure! So first thing, just in case it isn't obvious to you:

Who hosts your domain name, and who hosts the actual content of your site, do *not* need to be the same organization.

For my domains, I'm currently using https://www.hover.com as well as https://porkbun.com.

I've been happy with both, I've used Hover for far longer than Porkbun, but the latter is a bit cheaper. So for now my domains are split the two, I may consolidate later.