Domain and hosting for a small business, explained

What a domain is and what hosting is

The domain is the name people type (yourbusiness.com), and you rent it a year at a time from a registrar. Hosting is the server that stores your site's files and shows them to visitors. DNS settings at the registrar point the name at the host.

Because they are linked only by those DNS settings, you can change hosts or website platforms without changing your domain. ICANN, the body that oversees domain names, notes the same thing: you can change hosting providers or point your nameservers somewhere new without transferring the domain at all.

Email is a third piece. Your domain can send and receive email through Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 or a smaller provider, independently of the website.

What each piece costs

Always compare the renewal price. Namecheap's $6.79 first-year .com offer for new customers, and the free first-year domains that builders include, all renew at higher standard prices.

Where small business owners buy domains

In r/smallbusiness threads asking which registrar to use, the same names come up again and again: Cloudflare (sells at cost, though it does not offer every extension), Porkbun (fair prices, praised support, free WHOIS privacy), and Namecheap (easy to use). Spaceship and Dynadot also got mentions. One owner said moving all their domains from GoDaddy to Spaceship saved them thousands.

GoDaddy draws the most complaints, mainly about add-ons pushed at checkout and higher renewals. A common piece of advice in those threads is to check whether a name is free with a WHOIS lookup rather than searching on a registrar's site, because owners worry searches get noticed. Whatever you think of that worry, a WHOIS check at lookup.icann.org costs nothing.

Make sure WHOIS privacy is included free. Porkbun and Cloudflare include it by default.

If the domain you want is taken

For an established company whose name was already registered, the most upvoted advice was to add a short natural word, like "shop" or "co", or use a clean shortened version of the name. Others pointed out that the domain does not have to match the business name exactly, since most people find you by searching your name anyway.

If someone is sitting on the name you want, buying it can be expensive. GoDaddy's broker service charges about $99 just to contact the owner, with no promise of a reply, and short .com names often sell for hundreds or more. A newer extension such as .shop is often available at the normal price if the brand name matters more than the .com.

One more warning, from a web developer whose post drew over 600 upvotes: seeing a domain in your registrar dashboard does not prove you own it. Their purchase had silently failed at the registry. After buying, look your domain up at lookup.icann.org and check that the registrar and creation date are right.

Who should own the domain and hosting

You should. That is the clear consensus from both owners and the developers who build for them. The top answer in an r/webdev thread on this put it simply: they want clients to be fine if the developer gets hit by a bus tomorrow. So clients open their own registrar, hosting and code accounts, and invite the developer in as a user.

A web designer in r/smallbusiness called this the single question that saves owners the most money: register the domain yourself before anyone builds anything, then add the builder as a user. When someone registers it for you as a favor and later stops replying or wants a fee to release it, getting it back can be slow and sometimes impossible.

Some developers prefer to host client sites on their own servers and charge for it, because clients forget renewals and lose logins. That is a reasonable service. The domain should still be in your name, and you should have a written list of every account the site depends on (domain, hosting, email, analytics) and whose name each one is in.

How to get your domain back from a designer

First find out where it is registered. Search your domain at lookup.icann.org; the Registrar field tells you which company holds it.

If you can still reach the designer, ask them to move it into an account in your name. Most registrars let them push it to your account directly, or change the registrant to you.

If you are moving it to a different registrar, ICANN's transfer rules work in your favor. Your registrar must give you the transfer code (also called the auth or EPP code) within five calendar days of your request. A registrar can refuse a transfer only for limited reasons, such as fraud, a dispute over who is authorizing it, unpaid fees, or the domain being within 60 days of its registration or a previous transfer. If you change the registrant's name, organization or email, a 60-day transfer lock may apply, so ICANN suggests finishing a transfer before you change contact details.

If the person who registered it will not cooperate, contact the registrar with proof that the business is yours, and if that fails, file a complaint with ICANN.

Hosting: how much do you need?

Very little, for most small business sites. A commenter answering an owner who expected 10,000 visitors a month said that is a low load any mainstream shared or managed host can handle with a CDN in front, and that page speed matters more than server size when you are paying for traffic.

Pick hosting with automatic backups, free SSL, and support you can reach. If you are on a builder, hosting is already part of your plan, so do not let anyone bill you separately for it.

Our own free websites run on hosting opened in the client's name. The free WordPress website page explains the handover.