Domain vs Hosting: What Each One Does and Why You Need Both

A domain and hosting are often sold as if they were the same thing, and a lot of confusion starts there. They are two separate services, usually bought from two separate companies, and your website does not work without both. Here is what each one does, what it costs you to get wrong, and how to connect a domain you bought anywhere to hosting from us.

The difference in one sentence

A domain is your website's address. Hosting is the place where the website's files live. Visitors type the address, the internet looks up where that address points, and the hosting server sends back your pages.

The usual comparison is a shop. The domain is the signboard and the street address; hosting is the building and the shelves inside it. You can move the shop to a new building and keep the same signboard, which is exactly what happens when you change hosting companies and keep your domain.

Neither one replaces the other. A registrar that also sells hosting is still selling you two products, and a host that bundles a domain is doing the same. Keeping the two clearly separate in your mind makes renewals, transfers and support requests far easier.

What a domain is and where you buy it

A domain name such as yourbusiness.pk or yourbusiness.com is registered through a registrar for a fixed term, typically one or two years, and renewed before it expires. Registration does not give you a website. It gives you the exclusive right to use that name and to decide where it points.

For .pk names, registration goes through PKNIC, the registry for Pakistan's country domain, either directly or through a reseller. For .com and other global extensions, any accredited registrar works. ProWebHosting does not sell domains. Buy yours wherever you prefer, keep the registrar login safe, and we will help you connect it.

Two things matter when registering. First, the domain should be registered in your name or your company's name, not your web developer's, so you keep control if you part ways. Second, set the domain to renew automatically or put the expiry date in your calendar. An expired domain takes the website and every email address on it offline at once.

The domain also carries your email. Addresses such as info@yourbusiness.pk exist because the domain's DNS says where mail for that name should be delivered. That is why moving the domain's DNS carelessly can break email even when the website is fine, and why this guide treats email records separately below.

What hosting is and what it includes

Hosting is the server space where your files, databases and email are stored and served to visitors around the clock. With ProWebHosting you get a shared hosting account on DirectAdmin, on servers in Europe, with a free SSL certificate, email on your domain, MySQL databases, a WordPress installer and a PHP version selector on every one of our hosting plans.

The domain and hosting connect through DNS, the internet's address book. Your hosting account sits on a server with an IP address. DNS records tell the world that your domain points to that address. Change the records and the same domain can point to a different host tomorrow. Hosting is billed for the space and resources, not for the name: if you host two domains on one account, you pay for one hosting plan and two domain registrations.

How to point your domain to ProWebHosting

There are two ways to connect a domain you bought elsewhere to your hosting account. Changing the nameservers hands the whole domain's DNS over to us. Setting an A record keeps DNS at your registrar and points only the website to our server. Both work. Nameservers are simpler if you do not run other services on the domain. An A record is better if you already use the domain for email or a third-party service elsewhere and want to change as little as possible.

Whichever option you choose, you can check progress with any public DNS lookup tool: look up the domain's A record and see whether it returns our server IP. Until it does, the domain is still pointing at the old location for at least some visitors, so do not judge the site by what you see in your own browser alone.

Once the domain resolves, it needs to exist in DirectAdmin. Your main domain is set up when the account is created. Extra domains, on plans that allow addon domains, are added under Account Manager, Domain Setup. If you use our nameservers, the domain's records live under Account Manager, DNS Management, and that is where you edit them. Our DirectAdmin DNS guide covers each record type, and the addon domains guide covers adding a second site.

Common mistakes when buying a domain and hosting separately

• Buying a domain and expecting a website to appear. The domain needs hosting before it shows anything at all.
• Letting the developer register the domain in their own account. Always register it in your name.
• Changing nameservers when email is hosted elsewhere, which moves DNS away from the records that email depends on. Use an A record instead, or recreate the MX records with us first.
• Requesting SSL before the domain points to the server. Let's Encrypt checks the domain over the internet before issuing a certificate, so issue SSL after DNS has propagated.
• Renewing hosting but not the domain, or the other way round. Both need to stay active for the site to stay online.

If you are moving from another host, keep the old account active until the domain resolves to us and you have checked the site. Then cancel the old account. Our website migration page explains how we handle the move.

Frequently asked questions