Web hosting
Web hosting for clubs and associations: website and email
A club website has to be easy to maintain and survive the next change of committee. WordPress Säntis gives you hosting, email addresses and free SSL for a yearly price that stays the same at every renewal.
What a club needs from its hosting
A club or association has different priorities from a company. The website is usually maintained by volunteers, often in the evening and by people who change over the years. The budget is approved at the general meeting and should not suddenly rise the following year. And at the next change of committee at the latest, it becomes clear whether the logins have been properly documented.
- Easy updates: events, reports and photos go online without any programming skills.
- Predictable costs: a fixed amount per year that fits the club budget.
- Email addresses per role, such as president@, treasurer@ or info@, instead of private addresses.
- Logins that belong to the club and are handed over when the committee changes.
- Careful handling of registrations, member lists and photos from events.
Our recommendation: WordPress Säntis
WordPress Säntis suits most clubs. The plan is designed for one WordPress website, offers 40 GB of storage and 2 GB of RAM and costs CHF 10.90 per month, billed yearly. You install WordPress with one click, LiteSpeed Cache is preconfigured, and in WP Toolkit you decide which updates run automatically. That keeps the website up to date even when nobody looks after it for a few weeks.
In the staging copy you test a new theme or a calendar plugin before it goes live. JetBackup backs up the website every day. If a page is deleted by mistake, you restore it yourself in cPanel, free of charge.
Does your club run a second site next to the main one, for a tournament or a village fête, or would you rather not use WordPress? Then choose Web Hosting Rigi with up to 10 domains for CHF 11.90 per month.
Email addresses for the committee and teams
With WordPress Säntis you create unlimited mailboxes on the club domain. Role addresses work better than personal names: when the treasurer steps down, her successor receives the password for treasurer@ – with all previous messages. Forwarding is possible too, for example from committee@ to every committee member. You use the mailboxes on your smartphone, in Outlook or in webmail.
Domain and logins: in the club's name, not a person's
Register the domain in the name of the club, with the club address as the holder. The same applies to the customer account at HostOn: enter a club address such as info@ or committee@ as the contact so that invoices and notices do not end up in the private inbox of a former committee member. Write down in a short document where the domain, hosting and WordPress logins are, and hand it over at the general meeting together with the accounts.
A .ch domain costs CHF 6.90 for the first year at HostOn and CHF 14.90 per year on renewal. A .swiss domain is also possible if the association has its own UID number; OFCOM checks every application before the domain is allocated.
Costs over three years
For the club budget, what matters is the cost of the website over several years. The hosting price stays the same at every renewal; only the first year of a .ch domain is cheaper.
| Year | WordPress Säntis | .ch domain |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | 12 × CHF 10.90 | CHF 6.90 |
| Year 2 | 12 × CHF 10.90 | CHF 14.90 |
| Year 3 | 12 × CHF 10.90 | CHF 14.90 |
| Total 3 years | 36 × CHF 10.90 | CHF 6.90 + 2 × CHF 14.90 |
All prices include 8.1% Swiss VAT, with no setup fee. SSL certificate, daily backups and mailboxes are included. The invoice is made out to the club and arrives once a year, which makes life easier for the treasurer.
Moving an existing club website
Is your website currently with another provider? We move WordPress websites and other PHP websites to HostOn free of charge, with files, database and emails, usually within 24–48 hours. Beforehand you check everything on a temporary address. You transfer a .ch domain free of charge with the auth code, and the remaining term is kept. Websites built with site builders can usually not be moved directly; in that case you rebuild the content in WordPress.
Data protection on the club website
As soon as your website uses a contact form, event registrations or statistics tools, it processes personal data and usually needs a privacy policy. Only ask for what you really need in forms, protect member lists and minutes with a login, and only publish photos from events with the consent of the people who can be recognised – for children, with their parents' consent. This is general information, not legal advice.
Web hosting for other audiences
Frequently asked questions
Answers to the questions we are asked most often about this service.
For a WordPress website with events, reports and email addresses for the committee, WordPress Säntis is enough. If the club runs several websites or does not use WordPress, Web Hosting Rigi with up to 10 domains is the better choice.
Yes. When ordering, enter the club name and the club address in the customer account. The invoice arrives once a year in the name of the club.
The logins stay with the club. You update the contact details in the client area, change the passwords and hand the logins over to the new people in charge. Role addresses such as treasurer@ change hands with all their messages, without anything having to be reconfigured.
Yes. In WordPress you create a separate user account for each person, for example for match reports or for the events list. Nobody has to share a password, and when someone leaves you remove their access in a few clicks.
No. You renew the hosting at the same price as long as you stay on the same plan without interruption; changes to VAT are reserved. For a .ch domain the first year is cheaper than the renewal, and both prices are shown openly on our website.
