Domain, Hosting, Website, Email: What's the Difference?

Four things go into a business website, and people mix them up all the time: the domain, the hosting, the website itself and the email. They're often sold by different companies, billed on different schedules and held in different names. Most days that doesn't matter. It matters when one of them stops working, or when you want to change who builds or hosts your site and find out you don't control the part you need.

Here's what each one is, who you pay for it, and who owns it.

The short version

Some companies sell two or three of these together. That's convenient, but the parts still renew, break and move separately, so it helps to know which is which.

Your domain is your address

Your domain is the name people type to find you, and the part of your email address after the @. You get one from a registrar. When you register a domain, you enter a contract with the registrar, and from then on you manage the domain's settings through your account there (ICANN).

ICANN, which accredits registrars, recommends registering directly with an accredited registrar. Some companies that sell domains aren't accredited and resell names from ones that are (ICANN FAQ).

You don't buy a domain forever. You register it for a set period, typically one to ten years, and you renew it before it expires if you want to keep using it, along with the website and email that depend on it (ICANN). ICANN compares it to a lease rather than a purchase. Under ICANN's policy, registrars have to send you two renewal reminders, about a month and a week before the domain expires, so keep the contact details on your registration up to date.

Choosing the name is its own job. How to Choose a Domain Name covers length, spelling, extensions and trademarks.

DNS connects your domain to everything else

Computers find each other by number, not by name. DNS, the Domain Name System, is the internet's phonebook: it translates a domain name into the IP address a browser needs to load the site (Cloudflare).

Your domain's DNS records are the instructions for those lookups. Three you'll hear about (Cloudflare):

• A record: holds the IP address of your domain.
• CNAME record: points a domain or subdomain at another domain name instead of an address.
• MX record: directs mail to an email server.

That's how your domain, your hosting and your email can sit with three different companies. The A or CNAME records send visitors to your host. The MX records send mail to your email provider.

It's also why you can move a website without moving your email: the website's records change and the mail records stay put. The one thing to watch is that whoever makes the change edits only the records they need. If the mail records go missing, your email stops arriving.

Hosting is where the website lives

A website is files and code, and they have to sit on a computer that's always on and connected, ready to send them to anyone who visits. That's hosting. You rent it, by the month or the year.

A site also needs an SSL certificate. It's what lets the site use HTTPS, an encrypted connection, and in Chrome you can see it by clicking the padlock next to the address (Cloudflare).

On my plans, hosting isn't a separate bill. The $79/mo care plan starts the day your site launches and covers hosting on Vercel with SSL, daily backups, uptime monitoring, and security and dependency updates. It's month to month: either of us can end it with 30 days' written notice, and if you end it, I hand over your code and you host the site wherever you like. If a care plan payment stays unpaid for 30 days, the site goes offline, and after 90 days it's deleted from my hosting. The code is still yours, and I hand it over on request.

The care plan doesn't include changes to the site. Those are $150 an hour, billed in 15-minute increments with a 30-minute minimum, or $675 for a prepaid block of five hours.

The website is the part people see

The website is the design, the pages, the words, the photos, and the code that holds them together. It can be made with a website builder, run on WordPress, or written in code. The sites in my plans are built in Next.js and hosted on Vercel. Whether you can edit the pages yourself depends on how the site is built, and Will I Be Able to Edit My Own Website? covers that question.

Ownership is fuzziest here, because it depends entirely on your contract with whoever builds the site. On my plans it's written down:

• Once the build fee is paid in full and the site launches, the design, pages and code are yours, and I hand over a copy of the code repository whenever you ask after launch.
• Until the fee is paid in full, the design and code belong to Popproxx.
• I keep the tools, components and templates I use across projects, and you get a permanent license to keep using the ones in your site.
• What you give me, such as text, photos and logos, stays yours.

If you're weighing a website builder against a custom site, the real cost of a free website builder adds up three years of each.

Business email is its own service

An address at your own domain, like you@yourbusiness.com, comes from an email provider, not from your website. Your domain's MX records tell the world which provider gets your mail. Google Workspace is one: its plans include custom business email, priced per user per month (Google Workspace pricing).

Because email is separate, it keeps working while your website changes. It does depend on your domain, though: if the domain lapses, the email at it stops too, which is one more reason to keep the renewal current.

Setting up Google Workspace email on your domain is a $150 add-on to any of my website plans (add-ons). It covers the setup in your own Google account: verifying your domain, the MX record Gmail needs, the SPF, DKIM and DMARC records Google recommends (Google Workspace Help), and up to two mailboxes. Moving old email, setting up devices and anything more is billed hourly. Google's monthly subscription is yours, billed by Google. Whoever sets it up, the Workspace account should be in your business's name, with an admin login you hold.

Put your domain in your own name

If I could give every business owner one piece of advice about any of this, it would be this one.

ICANN's own FAQ describes the problem. If a developer registered your domain for you, they may have used their own contact details, even if you paid for it. Then they're the registrant of record, the person who holds the rights to the domain, and getting it back can mean proving to the registrar that you paid (ICANN FAQ).

So, whoever builds your site:

• Register the domain in an account you own, with your business as the registrant and an email address you'll keep.
• Know who your registrar is. ICANN Lookup shows the current registration data for a domain, and the registrar's name is in the results (ICANN). Then log in there and check that the registrant is you.
• Keep the renewal current, and your contact details too, so the reminders reach you.
• Share access, not ownership. Someone who needs to edit your DNS records doesn't need to be the registrant to do it.

That's how I work. On my plans, intake (the questionnaire you fill in after paying) asks whether you already own a domain, and which one. If you don't have one yet, you register it yourself, in your own name. Either way, you point it to Cloudflare by switching its nameservers to the ones I give you, and I set up and manage the DNS records there. When the build is complete and any balance is paid, I connect your domain and the site goes live.

Questions to ask before you hire anyone

• Whose name will the domain be registered in, and who has the login?
• Where will the site be hosted, what does that cost, and what does it include?
• Who owns the design and the code, and can I get a copy?
• Who holds the email account?
• What happens if I stop paying for hosting?

For my plans, the answers are all above.

If you already have a WordPress site

If you'd rather keep the WordPress site you have, I host and look after existing WordPress sites on LiteSpeed servers I run, case by case, on a written quote. Content and design changes aren't included. A $500 deposit starts the quote; it's refundable until you accept, and credited to the work. Ask for a quote.

Where to go next

If you want email at your domain, the $150 Google Workspace setup is on the add-ons page.

If you're starting a new site, see the plans. Starter is $2,400 for 5 pages, Deluxe $4,080 for 7 and Premium $6,720 for 10. Each is one build fee, paid in full for 10% off or half now and half before launch, and hosting comes with the $79/mo care plan from launch day. When you're ready, start your project.