If you want to create a professional website or blog, you need to purchase a domain and hosting service from a hosting provider.
What is a Domain? What about web hosting?
It may seem like a trivial question for industry experts but for those who are approaching the web it is anything but obvious: what is the difference between domain and hosting?
Let’s find out the meaning and characteristics of these two interconnected and often confused terms.
Content index:
What is a Domain?
The domain is the address that unequivocally identifies the website connected to it: each domain tells the browser where to go to view the website.
In reality, we can define the domain as a shortcut for remembering the IP address, a long numeric string that is difficult to memorize: thanks to the domain, it will be easier for users to remember the name of your site, bringing you traffic and potential turnover. An example of a domain is shellrent.com. in fact, the domain name is what the user types to find your business, connected to your web space thanks to DNS management.
Our advice for beginners? Choose a name that is simple, intuitive and related to your business: in this way it will be easier for users to find you.
Domain levels
The top-level domain includes hundreds of available extensions (TLDs): sul our site, you can find a list with more than 800 extensions (.com, .it, .eu). Remember to consider an extension that aligns with your brand and your services: why choose a geographical extension of a particular country, if your market of interest is not in that country?
The second-level domain corresponds to the real name that users associate with the site, for example in shellrent. com, .com is the TLD while shell rent is the second-level domain.
The third-level domain is used to create an “extension” of your site. In addition to the classic wwwsubdomains are mainly used for:
- Create a blog: thanks to the subdomain, you can connect your site to your blog, for example with yoursite.com;
- Create an application: you can connect your site to an application, for example with yoursite.com;
- Create an e-commerce platform: very useful for business users, the creation of e-commerce platforms includes special spaces, for example with yoursite.com.
What is Web Hosting?
A Web Hosting is a web space hosted on a server: this space is shared with other users, each with its own unique domain but all with the same IP address. What does it mean? The resources of the entire server are shared among various users, for unrelated web projects. Sharing your web space with other users limits your autonomy but allows you to obtain an economic and in any case high-performance solution. If you want to opt for more independence of your site, you can buy a Dedicated IP and unique for your website, to improve your web reputation in search engines.
All the elements that make up the site are hosted within your hosting space, such as pages, files and images, and any database used to create the site itself.
With a metaphor, we can define hosting as a room inside a house: the room represents the web hosting, while the house is the server provided by the hosting provider where the hosting is hosted.
Which Web Hosting Plan to Choose?
The hosting market is full of alternatives and possibilities and you must pay attention to the choice of the hosting provider to be advised on the plan that best suits your needs: in addition to considering the performance, the security and reliability of your site are also elements fundamental.
We always try to improve our procedures to guarantee you the necessary protection: our payoff The first Italian hosting Security First highlights safety as a primary asset in the company, and the attention we dedicate to the customer thanks to the technical support makes us proud. About that to understand how the assistance works we recommend the interview with our Technical Support Manager, Ivo Lauro. If you want to know how we work every day to implement the security of our services, read the article where we explain that what our payoff means to us .
As far as hosting is concerned, we offer you a wide range of solutions: consult our proposals Linux, Windows and with panel Plesk. If in doubt, don’t worry, we have all the internal resources to help you make the right choice.
All of our plans are scalable in both upgrades and downgrades to ensure you have the optimal resources for your online project.
Having clear ideas on the difference between domain and hosting and especially on the right hosting to buy will help you in the creation and optimization of your site, allowing you to reach your professional goals as quickly as possible.
What are you waiting for? Contact us for more information on our plans: we are at your disposal.