Domain, hosting and email for small businesses in Austria: what to arrange and who should own it

Short answer: your online presence rests on three things: a domain (your address, such as company.at), hosting (where the website runs) and email (your address@company.at). For a small business in Austria the safe set-up is a .at domain that is registered in your company’s name through a registrar accredited by nic.at, a website hosted in the EU, and a business email service on your own domain with SPF, DKIM and DMARC switched on.

These topics are rarely exciting and often handled once and forgotten, until a domain expires, the email lands in spam or an agency relationship ends and nobody can find the login. We see the same problems again and again, so this is a plain checklist for non-technical owners. It describes the principles; check current terms with your registrar and providers.

How do you register a .at domain?

The .at domain is run by nic.at, the Austrian registry. Private customers and companies do not register with nic.at directly. You order through a registrar accredited by nic.at, which can be an Austrian hosting company or another provider. Registrars differ in price, service and extras, so compare them.

• The domain holder should be you, meaning your company with its correct name and address. A common trap: an agency registers the domain in its own name “to make it easier”. If you part ways, getting the domain back can become a problem.
• Keep your own login at the registrar and give the agency delegated access instead of ownership.
• Note the renewal date and set up automatic renewal. An expired domain takes your website and email offline.
• Protect the contact email. Renewal notices and transfer messages go there; use an address that you read and that does not sit on the domain itself.
• Register obvious variants if they matter to you, such as the .com or the spelling without hyphens, and point them to your main address.

If you ever move to another registrar, you need a transfer code (an authorisation code) from the current one. The process is the same in principle for every registrar; ask yours for the exact steps.

Where should the website be hosted?

Hosting is the server that delivers your website to visitors. Two questions matter: where it is and what it is made of.

Location: the EU

Your website handles personal data, even a simple contact form does. Under the GDPR you need a lawful basis and a clear picture of where data goes. Hosting inside the EU keeps this simple. Since July 2023 the EU has also recognised US companies that joined the EU-US Data Privacy Framework as adequate, so US providers are possible, but you then have to check that the specific provider is certified and name them in your privacy policy. Our own sites run in the Frankfurt region.

Type: shared server, managed hosting or a modern platform

A content delivery network (CDN) stores copies of your pages near visitors, which makes the site faster; see why load time costs customers. Whatever you choose, make sure someone is responsible for updates, backups and security. That is exactly what a maintenance plan covers; our web design includes this question from the start.

How do you set up business email?

Email is separate from the website. Your site can sit with one provider and your mailboxes with another, as long as the domain’s DNS settings point to each correctly.

• Use an address on your own domain (name@company.at), not a free webmail address. It looks more trustworthy and stays with you if you change provider.
• Choose a business email service for mailboxes, calendar and storage. Common choices are Microsoft 365, Google Workspace or smaller providers with EU data centres. Check where each stores data and read the data processing agreement.
• Set up a few role addresses such as office@ or info@, and forward them to people so that nothing goes unread.
• Keep email separate from hosting where you can, so that an issue with the website does not take down your mail.

Why does my email land in spam? SPF, DKIM and DMARC

Three settings in your domain’s DNS tell receiving servers that a message really comes from you:

• SPF lists which servers may send mail for your domain.
• DKIM adds a digital signature to each message, proving it was not altered.
• DMARC tells receivers what to do when a message fails those checks and sends you reports.

These matter more than they used to. Since 2024 Google and Yahoo require senders of large volumes of mail to authenticate with SPF and DKIM and to publish a DMARC policy, and many receivers apply the same standards to everyone. Even for a small business, setting all three correctly is the single best step against messages disappearing. Your email provider documents the exact records, and your agency or IT contact can enter them. The contact form on your website should send through a properly set-up address on your domain, too.

Who should own what? A simple list

Write this on one page and keep it somewhere safe. If a person leaves your company or an agency, you will be glad you did. We keep the equivalent for our clients and document it as part of every project; see our web design and the relaunch guide for what changes with a new site.

Written byPatryk WisniewskiLead developer

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