Website hosting domains and email explained

What it costs 6 min read

Hosting, domain and email are three separate things with three separate bills. Here is which is which, and how to tell from the symptom which one broke.

There is a charge on your card from a company you do not recognize, for something to do with your website, and you cannot tell whether canceling it would take the site down or do nothing at all.

That confusion is almost always the same confusion. Three separate things get called "the website", and until they are pulled apart, no bill and no fault ever makes sense.

Three things, three bills, three logins

The domain is your address. It is the name people type. You rent it from a registrar, usually a year at a time.

The hosting is the building your site sits in. It is a computer somewhere that is always switched on, holding your pages and handing them out when somebody asks. You rent that too, usually monthly or yearly.

The email is your mailbox. It is a separate service that handles messages sent to your name, and it very often lives with a completely different company from the other two.

One company can sell you all three, which is convenient and is also why people assume they are one thing, when they can be bought from three companies, moved independently, and lost independently.

The domain is only the address

A domain does nothing on its own. It is a name that points somewhere.

Two things matter about yours. First, that it renews, because a lapsed domain takes down the website and the email at once and can be difficult to get back. Second, that it is in your name, in an account you can log into, not held on your behalf by somebody who built the site once.

Pointing is the other half. Behind your domain is a short list of settings that says where the website lives and where the mail goes. Those settings are why you can change hosts without changing your address, and why an email problem can be fixed without touching the site at all.

The hosting is the building

Hosting is space on a machine, and plans differ mostly by how much of that machine you share with other people. A small local site does not need much. What it does need is a host that keeps the machine updated and does not put your site on an overcrowded one.

Hosting costs money, though not much for a site like yours, and it is worth knowing what you pay, because it is the bill people most often cannot identify.

Two things are often bundled into hosting and are not the same as it: the security certificate, which is what stops browsers showing a warning, and backups, which some hosts take and some do not.

The email is the mailbox, and it is the one that catches people

Your address at your own domain can be handled by a proper mail provider, by your host as a side service, or by a forwarding rule that quietly passes everything to a personal account. Owners frequently do not know which of the three they have.

That matters on the day you move hosts. If the mail was a free extra from the old host, moving the website can take the mailbox with it, along with everything in it, and nobody warns you because the person moving the site is looking at the site.

Before anything moves, ask one question: where does my email actually live, and is it coming with me.

Which one broke, told by the symptom

You can narrow almost any website emergency in thirty seconds.

The site will not load and neither will email, and it happened at midnight on a renewal date. That is the domain.

The site is down or showing a host error page, but email arrives fine. That is hosting.

The site loads perfectly, but mail is bouncing or has gone silent. That is the mail service or the pointing settings, and the website is not involved.

A full page warning about the connection not being private, in front of a site that is otherwise there. That is the security certificate, which is its own small subject.

Everything works for you and nobody else can reach it. That is usually your own device or connection, so check on mobile data before you call anybody.

The one page you should write down

Keep this in the same place as your insurance documents. It takes twenty minutes once and it is the difference between a bad afternoon and a bad month.

• The domain name, exactly as registered, and the date it renews
• Which company the domain is registered with, and the login for it
• Which company hosts the website, and the login for it
• Which company handles your email, and the login for it
• Which card each of those three is billed to
• Whether each is set to renew automatically
• Who else has access to any of these accounts
• The name and phone number of whoever built the site
• Where a copy of the site is kept

What this should cost you

Nobody can quote you a fair number without knowing the site, and anybody who does it instantly is quoting for something generic.

What is fair to say is the shape. A domain is the cheapest of the three by a long way and is billed yearly. Hosting for a small local site is a modest monthly or yearly amount, and the expensive tiers are built for shops and busy platforms rather than for six pages about your trade. Email per mailbox is small and worth paying for, because free arrangements are where mail goes missing.

For what we do, hosting sits inside Website Care at $149 a month, and the build itself is $1,450 once, after which the site is yours. You can also take the site elsewhere and pay your own host directly, and there are times we will tell you to do exactly that.

Questions people ask

Is a domain the same as hosting?

No. The domain is the address people type and the hosting is the space the site actually occupies. You pay for them separately and can hold them at different companies.

Can I move my website without losing my email?

Usually yes, but only if you find out first where the email lives. If it came free with the old host, plan the move for the mailbox before you move the site.

Who should own the domain name?

You, in an account in your name that you can log into. Anything else means somebody can take your address with them.

What happens if my hosting expires but my domain does not?

The address still points somewhere, and there is nothing there. Visitors see an error page or a holding page. Your email may keep working, which makes it easy to miss.

Do I need to buy hosting if my site is on a website builder?

Not separately. Builders include hosting in the monthly price, which is part of what you are paying for and part of why moving away later is more work than people expect.

Can I keep my domain and change everything else?

Yes, and that is exactly why the domain should be in your name. It is the one piece you take with you.