Your domain registrar DOES matter on the point of whether they'll protect your privacy by default or not. Gandi.net is one that does, although there are others. You should absolutely never have to pay for whois privacy! (Avoid GoDaddy like the plague for that reason, among others.) Also, be sure to shop around and make sure you're paying market price for a domain. You should only be paying once a year, you should be able to point the domain to anywhere you want, and there should be no limits on what ports you can use.
You can host your own email on the domain name for free with any half-decent web host. It's relatively trivial to configure Postfix/Dovecot, either through a host-provided wizard, or manually configured yourself. Don't pay extra for this "feature" — it should cost you nothing extra on top of your ordinary hosting and domain name fees, so any upcharges for email are always deceptive.
Linode is an excellent option. I pay $7/mo for a virtual host with regular backups, and I can do anything I want with it. They have handy configuration scripts to save you time on most common setups, including your standard HTTPS+email configurations.
I agree, and some do it terribly but I don't personally need Whois privacy personally.
Right, but I went for an absolute budget of no more than $15 and avoided web hosts like the plague. Especially since most of the "half-decent" web host providers are awful. Especially Duda, Wix, Squarespace, Godaddy, and pretty much anything except Weebly, Linode, and... Yeah, I can't name anything else.
Linode is a great option, but I did not mention it on purpose, as it hurts the budget.The only reason I didn't included.
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
A few notes:
Your domain registrar DOES matter on the point of whether they'll protect your privacy by default or not. Gandi.net is one that does, although there are others. You should absolutely never have to pay for whois privacy! (Avoid GoDaddy like the plague for that reason, among others.) Also, be sure to shop around and make sure you're paying market price for a domain. You should only be paying once a year, you should be able to point the domain to anywhere you want, and there should be no limits on what ports you can use.
You can host your own email on the domain name for free with any half-decent web host. It's relatively trivial to configure Postfix/Dovecot, either through a host-provided wizard, or manually configured yourself. Don't pay extra for this "feature" — it should cost you nothing extra on top of your ordinary hosting and domain name fees, so any upcharges for email are always deceptive.
Linode is an excellent option. I pay $7/mo for a virtual host with regular backups, and I can do anything I want with it. They have handy configuration scripts to save you time on most common setups, including your standard HTTPS+email configurations.