Your domain, hosting and website: three different things

Three parts, often mixed up

When people say “my website,” they usually mean three separate things, often paid for in different places:

• The domain is your address on the internet, like yourbusiness.com. You rent it by the year from a company called a registrar.
• The hosting is the computer that stores your site and sends it to visitors. You also pay for it monthly or yearly.
• The website is the actual pages: the design, words and photos. Someone built it, and it lives on the hosting.

The domain is the one that matters most to own outright, because it is the address on your trucks, cards and Google profile. You can move a website to new hosting in an afternoon. Losing your domain can mean starting over.

Make sure the domain is in your name

A common story goes like this. A nephew or a web company registers the domain for you, in their own account, years ago. Then they move, close up shop or stop answering. The domain comes up for renewal, the card on file has expired and the address you have printed everywhere goes dark or gets bought by someone else.

The fix is simple, and it is worth doing this week:

• Find out which registrar holds your domain. You can look it up with a free “WHOIS” search.
• Make sure the account is in your name, with an email address you check, not your web person’s.
• Turn on two-step sign-in for the account.
• Turn on auto-renew, and keep a current card on file.
• Write the registrar name and login location somewhere safe, with your other important business records.

If you need to move it

If someone else controls your domain, ask them to transfer it to an account you own. It is a standard process. ICANN, which sets the rules for registrars, explains that you’ll need the domain unlocked and an authorization code from the current registrar.

Plan ahead, because a transfer isn’t always instant. ICANN’s rules allow a registrar to block transfers for 60 days after a domain is first registered or recently transferred. Start well before a renewal deadline, not the week of.

Hosting and email live on the same address

Your domain points to two things that are easy to break separately: your website and your email. They are controlled by settings called DNS records. If someone changes the website’s records and touches the email ones by mistake, your email can stop arriving with no warning.

Whenever anyone works on your domain settings, ask them to note what was there before and send a test email afterward. It takes two minutes and saves a very bad week.

Email on your own domain

Once you own a domain, you can use it for email, like ben@yourbusiness.com instead of a free webmail address. It looks more established on an estimate, and it stays yours if you ever change email providers, because the address is tied to the domain you own rather than to the provider.

Setting it up means adding email records to your domain and choosing a provider to send and receive mail. Do it once, carefully, and test it in both directions before you print the new address anywhere.

Keep owner access, share helper access

You should have the top-level login to your domain registrar, your hosting account and your Google Business Profile. When someone helps you, give them their own access as a helper or manager, if the service allows it, instead of handing over your password. When the work is done or the relationship ends, you remove their access. Nothing breaks, and you never have to change every password you own.

Questions to ask any website builder

Whoever builds your site, me included, you should get clear answers to these before you pay:

• Whose name will the domain be registered in?
• What does hosting cost after the first year, and what does it include?
• If I want to leave, can I take my site and domain with me, and how?
• Who do I call if the site goes down, and how fast will they respond?
• Do I get my own login, or do I have to ask you for every change?

For Site Squared SRQ sites, the first year of hosting is included, hosting and small updates cost $150 a year after that and the domain is registered in your name. More on that in what a $500 site includes.