The difference between 'Domain Registration' and 'Hosting'

Many people don't necessarily realise that Hosting and Domain Registration are separate and distinct services. While sometimes offered by one company that offers multiple solutions, they are generally kept separate for a good reason.

What Is A Domain Registrar?

A Domain Registrar is a company who registers and holds your domain name. Best-known companies in the UK include such as GoDaddy, 123-REG, UK-REG and 1&1 - the concept is that you pay somewhere from £10 to £30 per year for them to 'host' or 'manage' your domain name (i.e. yourcompanyname.com). In return, they process requests when a web user enters your domain address and ensure traffic is directed to the correct place. Such as the website (www.yourcompanyname.com) (A-Record), which would point to the server holding your website files. Or your email (yourname@yourcompanyname.com) would point to the correct email server. (MX Record (MX = Mail Exchange)).

Here at DigitalFlare, we recommend 123-REG as they offer a great solution, zero downtime, and they do not charge to move domains away from them or add bespoke records.

What Is A Web Host?

This is the actual server that holds the files that make your website work. (A server is simply a computer which is essentially 24 hours a day, 365 days a year - its purpose is to serve up files and handle databases etc). Hosting has many aspects, but a server offers redundant internet connections to serve your website to the masses. When you pay for a host, you are paying for the electricity, internet connection, physical server hardware, and any software or licensing required to run on the server.

AccuWeb hosting service provides all types of Web hosting solutions like Shared hosting, Windows VPS hosting, Dedicated hosting, and more. It provides a High uptime guarantee and the best customer support.

So what is the difference between domain name registration and website hosting?

The domain registrar and the web host are two separate services. One is a place for your domain name to reside; the other is for your website's files and emails to live. Also very important to understand that you can have two different companies handling these foreign entities - just because you want to move your website hosting to an other company doesn't mean you have to move your domain name to a new domain registrar. We usually recommend this to our clients because there are benefits to keeping your domain name and web host separate. One instance would be if your website host crashes or suddenly goes out of business. As long as you still have your domain name hosted separately, that account can be accessed, and the settings can be changed in just minutes to point the domain to a new web host ASAP. Some high-traffic sites rely on a variation of this tactic, having the site replicated on multiple web hosts and managing the domain name settings to direct traffic to the best hosting option according to server loads, etc. For this reason, you will rarely see a large website offline because they handle multiple servers across the globe and switch between servers should one fail.