Ritesh Saini ⋅ DigitalKube ⋅ 5 years experience

That includes SSL encryption, sitewide security hardening, server security hardening etc. You can find all the details here: https://www.digitalkube.com

Drew Schildwächter ⋅ Wilmington, NC Salesforce ⋅ 8 years experience

Jeffrey: you can take a look at this article for a good summary. Long story short, it's not free, but it can be fairly inexpensive.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/241722/web-apps/how-to-register-your-own-domain-name.html

Vinay Khatri ⋅ Venice, FL Techatom ⋅ 4 years experience

You can also go with this post that has a lot information about Securing your website and Why it important: https://www.techgeekbuzz.com/blog/what-is-ssl/

Cynthia McCrea ⋅ Saint Louis, MO U.S. Air Force, Airman First Class ⋅ 8 years served

I used:
GoDaddy and SquareSpace

Eddie Starr ⋅ Spokane, WA U.S. Navy, Seaman ⋅ 4 years served

When you mentioned secure, I thought you were referring to securing your web site, so that when people go to your site, you'll have https as opposed to http: https://www.instantssl.com/https-tutorials/what-is-https.html

Most charge to have the SSL/TLS. However, Let's Encrypt offers it for free. If your web site uses word press, there are a lot of plug-ins to do it for you.

Another one is https://www.sslforfree.com/ It also has fairly simple instructions on how to install them. You have to renew them semi-frequently, but it's free, and another good bit of Free & Open Source Software (FOSS).

Other options are here: https://geekflare.com/free-ssl-tls-certificate/

I, personally, have had a few bad experiences with Comodo, and would NOT recommend it.

Coach Russ ⋅ Las Vegas, NV https://military.microsoft.com/programs/mssa/?WT.mc_id=ClearedTalent ⋅ 10 years experience

Try www.weebly.com

Tim Feemster ⋅ Dallas, TX Foremost Quality Logistics ⋅ 40 years experience

I utilize GoDaddy to host my website. I already had the domain name and just ported it to GoDaddy. I also have my email accounts there but that is not necessary with today's gmail system. I actually utilize gmail in my business to house all my contacts, calendar,and emails. I forward my feemsters.com email to my gmail account and then read, send, and store the emails in folders within the gmail system. GoDaddy has email service, you just have to pay for it and the web portal was not as robust as gmail, in my opinion when I started my company in 2013. The value of my tim@feemsters.com email is that I never have to change my email address, regardless of my internet provider or if I move or anything.

Gerald Mannikarote ⋅ Houston, TX dMann Training Technologies ⋅ 20 years experience

Hi Jeffrey,
Drew provided a great article for your reference.
You need to purchase a domain name.
You can do free websites, but the domain will belong to someone else eg yoursite.wordpress.com . Generally, the free websites don't accommodate for business transactions. However, if you are doing business on eBay, for example, you could do a free site with a link to your eBay business.
I hope this helps.
Warm regards,
Jerry

Jeffrey Carter ⋅ San Antonio, TX U.S. Army Reserve, Lieutenant Colonel ⋅ 31 years served

Thank you, that helped a lot.