What is domain and hosting?

A domain and hosting may look very similar for newbies. But in fact, they are very different items. You need both domain and hosting to have your website online, up and running. In this article, we will explain what is domain and hosting, and explain the differences between them.

Difference between domain and hosting

A domain name is your name on the internet. Imagine you have a phone agenda, where you mark each person’s name and then its phone number. You won’t probably remember all the phone numbers of everyone, right?

So a domain name is like a world wide web agenda. Whenever you type the URL or domain name of a company, your browser will query the DNS Server of the hosting provider, and then it will obtain the website’s IP address. With the IP address in hands, your browser will reach the desired website.

In other words, the IP address is like the phone number of your website. But, it’s identified by the domain name, instead of a personal name in your phone’s agenda.

Ok, so what is hosting?

Hosting is the service provided by a web hosting company. A web hosting provider (like Copahost) owns several big web servers, connected to the internet. A web server is a physical big computer, having lots of hard disks, redundant internet links, remote backups, and other services.

The web hosting is necessary to connect to your domain name so that your web site can be online on the internet. It works together with your domain name.

What services can a web hosting company offer to small businesses?

A good web hosting company can offer a web hosting control panel, just like cPanel or DirectAdmin. Through this control panel, you can manage your email addresses, having your own email with your domain.

Also, Copahost offers an easy to use a web site builder. This way you can create your website without any technical knowledge, in a few minutes. There are several templates to choose from.

You can have a free SSL certificate with your hosting plan. A free SSL enables secure communications, where you can perform transactions and sales over the internet. Also, Google loves HTTPS-based websites and ranks them on top of others.

Domain registration and hosting with different companies

Do I have to buy both the domain name and hosting in the same company? Now that we have explained what is domain and hosting, it’s important to clarify this. It’s not necessary to have them ordered together.

A domain name is controlled by a domain registrar, and it works perfectly with any web hosting company.

But there is a huge advantage to order your domain name together with a hosting plan: Copahost gives you one year of free domain registration for yearly payments. Yes, that’s true.

Conclusion about what is domain and hosting

Although they work together, domain vs hosting are different things. Copahost offers both domain name registrations and web hosting plans. By choosing a hosting package, we will prepare your domain name registration automatically and connect it to your hosting plan.

That’s maybe the easiest way to have your website online on the internet.