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What’s the Difference Between Web
Hosting and Domain Hosting?
Every
website needs both web hosting and domain hosting. It’s common to get confused
between the two. They are in fact two different things.
Hosting
services like Bluehost, Siteground, and GoDaddy offer both web hosting and
domain hosting. When someone starts their first website, it’s common to buy
both domain and web hosting from the same provider. That makes it easy to
assume that the two services are the same.
Let’s
take a look at what each service is for and why it’s best to keep them
separate.
What is Domain Hosting
Domain
hosting is a service that provides domain names for websites. A domain hosting
service sells domains and registers them to an owner in exchange for a yearly
subscription fee. Different types of domains have different prices, from as low
as around 10$ reaching up to the $1000’s. Depending on how common or uncommon
the domain is.
A
domain is set up like this; www.YOURWEBSITENAME.com. It has different sections
separated with dots. What a domain does is direct visitors to a specific
website, much like the address of a house. Every domain has a matching IP
address that sets its location on the internet. Of course, it’s much easier to
remember and share a domain name than an IP address.
Domains
are categorized into levels. The most common are top-level, generic top-level,
and second-level. All web hosting providers that also offer domain hosting all
have top-level domains, some generic top-level domains, and some second-level
domains. The usual domain names are .com, .net, .org, .edu
There
are also specialized domain hosting providers that offer all sorts of
second-level domains, and generic top-level domains like .photo or .media.
Some
top-level domains like country-code top-level domains are only used for
websites in particular countries. In some cases, a country domain can be used
outside of the country it stands for as long as the owner of the website has
permission. For example, bit.ly, uses the country code top-level domain for
Lybia. Bit.ly permission to use that domain even though they are in the US.
By
buying a domain from a domain host, you gain ownership of that domain for as
long as you pay the yearly fee. But you can’t build a website without web
hosting, a domain only gets you an address.
What is Web Hosting
Web
hosting is a service that offers space to keep all the files for your
website. To be able to buy web hosting,
the provider will require that you already own a domain. If you don’t already
have one, the web hosting provider can sell you one. We’ll see later why that
might not be a good idea, and why it’s best to keep them separate.
There
are a few different types of web hosting, the most common are shared, managed,
and dedicated. Depending on what type of web hosting you buy, you will have
different tools at your disposal. Some web hosting offers services that help
keep your website running without you needing much technical knowledge.
Other
web hosting services give the owner partial or full control of the servers,
therefore needing a skilled tech team. Also, there’s managed hosting, which can
make any type of web hosting easier to handle with the help of the hosting
provider’s own developers and techs.
Shared
In
shared web hosting, a number of websites are hosted on the same server. This is
the best choice for small websites, bloggers who are starting out, and new
business owners.
In
a shared server, all the websites use the same RAM and CPU, meaning that if all
websites stay small, there shouldn’t ever be a problem. On the other hand, if
one of the websites in a shared server gets a surge of visits and crashes the
server, all the other websites hosted there will be affected too.
Dedicated
Different
to shared web hosting, dedicated web hosting hosts each website on its own
server. Since websites arent’s sharing a server, they can have a much larger
bandwidth for high traffic. Dedicated servers also offer a large amount of file
storage for websites with lots of information.
With
a dedicated server, the client has direct access to root and admin access. This
is a good choice if the company has a skilled tech team. Nevertheless,
dedicated web hosting can also be dedicated managed hosting for large websites
without tech teams.
Managed
Just
how there can be confusion between domain hosting and web hosting, there also
tends to be confusion between shared /dedicated hosting and managed hosting.
The reason it gets confusing is that all types of web hosting, be it shared,
dedicated, or cloud can also be managed.
That’s
because what managed hosting does is add a full suite of tools to install and
run WordPress, manage files, manage email. All that plus a team of developers
always at your disposal who are keeping things running smoothly under the hood.
Having
managed hosting saves a lot of time and eventual headaches when things go
wrong. Shared managed hosting is the most common type of web hosting for many
types of small businesses and blogs. Dedicated and cloud-managed hosting are
the best for big companies with websites that get a lot of traffic.
• Your domain can be used with any type
of web hosting.
Why
You Should Keep Domain and Web Hosting Separate
Just
how a hosting provider can offer domain hosting and web hosting in the same
package, it’s not always a great idea to buy them from the same provider. There
are a few reasons why.
1.
Better security against hacking. Separated domain and web hosting can help keep
a website safe from being hacked completely. If a hacker gets access through
your domain, they can then get access to all your files. Then they could lock
down the website and transfer the domain to wherever they want. You’d lose it
all.
If
a domain is not hosted with the same provider, then at least you won’t lose it.
Of course, as long as you don’t use the same login and passwords for both.
2.
Preventing domain loss. Let’s say you pay for web hosting and domain hosting on
the same day with the same provider. One year later, your subscription expires
and your domain goes into a holding pattern. If you didn’t switch hosts before
that happened, you could lose the domain completely.
Final Thoughts
The
confusion between domain hosting and web hosting is not as complicated as it
might seem at first. When a client of your web design business asks what each
thing is, this article can help you explain it. You can also simply send them
the link.
We
hope this article helped clear up some confusion and helped you better
understand the difference between domain hosting and web hosting.
Types of Web Hosting Services
These
are the six types of web hosting you will most often come across:
• Shared hosting.
• Virtual private server (VPS) hosting.
• Dedicated server hosting.
• Cloud hosting.
• Managed hosting.
• Colocation
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