If you’ve never had a website, “domain” and “hosting” sound like technical details someone else should worry about. They are simple ideas, and one of them matters more than almost anything else about your site.
The domain is your address
The domain is the name people type: yourbusiness.com. You rent it from a company called a registrar, usually by the year. It costs about $15 a year for a normal .com.
The domain is the most valuable technical thing your business owns online. It’s on your cards, your van, your Google profile and every link anyone has ever shared. Your email often runs on it too.
Hosting is where the site lives
Hosting is the computer that stores your website and sends it to visitors. Builders like Wix and Squarespace include hosting in their monthly fee. Classic web hosts charge separately.
A modern small business site doesn’t need expensive hosting. Ours run on Cloudflare’s global network on a free account, so pages load quickly almost anywhere in the world and there is no hosting bill.
The mistake that traps owners
A very common problem: the domain is registered in someone else’s name. A previous designer, a nephew, an agency that closed. The owner pays for everything, but legally the address belongs to someone else.
When that relationship ends, getting the domain back can take weeks, or never happen. Some businesses end up changing their name online because of it.
The fix is simple: the domain and hosting accounts should be in your name, with your email and your password, from day one. A designer can be given access. They should never be the owner.
Questions to ask whoever builds your site
- In whose name is the domain registered?
- Where is the site hosted, and in whose account?
- If we stop working together, what do I need to do to keep the site running?
The right answers are “yours”, “yours” and “nothing”.
How we handle it
Every site we build has the domain, the code and the hosting in the client’s name from the start. If you ever leave, the site keeps running on your own account and you take everything with you. You can see how that works and what it costs on our home page.