Domain and hosting, explained properly
Two words that get bundled into one invoice and cause more confusion than anything else about running a website. They are separate things and it is worth knowing which is which, because one of them is the only part you genuinely cannot afford to lose.
The domain is the address
yourfirm.co.uk. You rent it a year at a time from a registrar, and while you keep paying, it is yours.
A .co.uk costs a few pounds a year at cost. Anything you are charged above that is somebody’s handling fee, which is fine as long as you know that is what it is.
This is the part that must be in your name. Not your web person’s, not their company’s. It is the one thing that cannot be rebuilt if you lose access to it.
Hosting is the space it lives in
A computer somewhere that hands your pages out when somebody asks for them. For a small site, the honest cost is somewhere between nothing and a few pounds a month.
What you are usually paying for above that is not the space. It is somebody noticing when it goes down, keeping backups, and answering the phone.
What else is on that invoice
- The security certificate — the padlock. Free from Let’s Encrypt and renews itself. Nobody should be charging you much for this.
- Backups — a copy taken regularly and kept somewhere else. Worth paying for.
- Monitoring — something checking every few minutes that the site is up, and telling somebody when it is not.
- Email — often a separate service, and worth keeping separate from the website so that changing one does not break the other.
What it should add up to
For a small business site, somewhere between £50 and £300 a year covers all of it, depending on how much of the noticing and fixing is included.
Anything over that should come with an explanation of what the extra buys — sometimes there is a good one. What should worry you is an invoice that just says 'website services' with no breakdown.
The two questions to ask once a year
Whose name is the domain in? Check it yourself with a WHOIS lookup rather than asking — it takes ten seconds and it is public.
When was the last backup, and has anybody ever tried restoring one? A backup nobody has tested is a folder, not a backup.
Common questions
.co.uk or .com?
For a business trading in Britain, .co.uk. It reads as local and it is what people expect. Buy the .com as well if it is free and cheap, and point it at the same site so nobody else can take it.
Can I move my hosting without losing anything?
Yes. It is a routine job — copy the files, point the domain at the new place, check everything. There may be an hour where it is unreachable in some places. The domain being in your name is what makes it straightforward.
What happens if I forget to renew the domain?
There is a grace period of a few weeks where you can still get it back, then a redemption period where it costs a lot more, then it goes on sale to anybody. Turn auto-renew on and make sure the card on file is one that still exists.
Do I need my email on the same place as the website?
No, and it is often better not to. Keeping them separate means changing your website host never puts your email at risk, which is the more painful of the two to lose.
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