Domain vs hosting: what's the difference?
A domain and hosting are two different things people constantly mix up. Your domain is the address, the yourbusiness.com people type. Hosting is the land your site actually sits on. You own the domain; you only rent the hosting.
In plain English
Think of a physical shop. The domain is the street address on the door, the thing people use to find you. Hosting is the plot of land and the building itself, where all your stuff actually lives. You need both, and they are not the same purchase.
Three things to know
Your domain is the address
It is the name people type, yourbusiness.com, and it points visitors to where your site lives.
Hosting is the land
It is the server space your website and its files actually sit on, running day and night.
You own one, rent the other
The domain is yours year to year; hosting is an ongoing rent you keep paying to stay online.
Worth remembering
Hosting typically costs about 10 times more than the domain each year.
So budget for hosting as the real ongoing cost of being online; the domain itself is cheap. Knowing the split keeps you from overpaying or getting locked into the wrong plan.
What to do about it
If domains and hosting feel like alphabet soup, that is normal, and it is exactly the kind of thing I handle for clients. Ask me anything in a free audit and I will translate your setup into plain English.
Where this shows up in my work
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