Domains and hosting confuse a lot of people, mostly because they’re often bought together. They’re two different things.
The short version
- Your domain is your address. For example, mjjcreative.com.
- Your hosting is where your website’s files live, on a server that’s always on.
The domain tells people where to go. The hosting is what’s there when they arrive.
Domains
You rent a domain by the year from a company called a registrar. As long as you renew it, it’s yours to use.
A few things worth knowing:
- Let it expire, and you can lose it. Someone else can register it, and getting it back can be hard or expensive.
- The domain also runs your email if your email address ends in your domain. Changes to the domain settings can affect email, so they need care.
- Know where it’s registered and who has the login. This is one of the most common problems we see.
We register and renew your domain for you, on a service that also puts your site on a fast network around the world and adds protection against attacks.
Hosting
Hosting is a computer that stores your website and sends it to every visitor. Good hosting is fast, secure and backed up.
Cheap shared hosting puts many sites on one server, so a busy or hacked neighbour can slow yours down. Better hosting keeps each site isolated.
Our sites run on managed hosting, with every site kept separate from the others. Security is on from day one:
- HTTPS, with certificates that renew themselves
- A web application firewall
- Brute-force and DDoS protection
- Automatic backups
- Uptime monitoring
How they work together
When someone types your address, the domain’s settings (called DNS) point their browser to your hosting. The hosting sends back your site. That takes a fraction of a second.
Switching to a new host
Moving a site is routine, but a few things need checking first:
- Who has access to the domain
- Whether your email runs on the domain, so it keeps working
- That a backup of the old site exists before anything changes
Do you need to manage any of this?
Not with us. Hosting and your domain are set up and looked after for you, so it’s one less thing to think about. If you’d like to know exactly where everything is, just ask. Happy to walk you through it.
