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When building a business, it’s important to make sure your digital presence is unique, professional, and clear for visitors. Domain, web, and email hosting are all part of building a uniform, positive experience for your customers or audience.
If you’re just getting started, it can be easy to confuse the three. Read on for a simplifier on what these are, and information on how mastering this can help your brand.
Understanding web hosting vs. domains vs. email hosting
Email hosting, web hosting, and domain hosting all work similarly, but aren’t the same thing. Each element plays a distinct role in setting up your online presence. Put simply, web hosting helps you share your website, a domain gives your site a URL, and email hosting helps you communicate, ideally under a branded email address.
What is web hosting?
Web hosting makes your website available to visitors online. A web host is a company that stores the information, data, and files that make up your website, uploading that information to servers to keep it live and accessible to the public.
Web hosting is usually done via an organization called a web host, such as Squarespace. If your website isn’t hosted, visitors can’t access it. A good web host is secure and reliable. Web servers respond to millions of requests a day, so it’s important to choose one that’s powerful enough to ensure your site loads quickly and won’t go down during high-traffic periods. You can usually get a sense of this by researching a website platform or host’s uptime.
Web hosting and domain hosting are complementary parts of a functioning website. When a visitor enters your site URL into a browser, the browser looks up the IP address for your domain through a domain name system (DNS) search. Once that IP address is found, the web host connects the files, information, and data that make up your website to a web server, and brings that person to your site.
Read our full web hosting explainer
What is domain hosting?
A domain is the URL that helps visitors reach your website. Think of your domain name like an address that sends visitors to your website pages. Domains are typically hosted by a domain registrar, an organization or company that sells and manages domain names.
Your domain name connects your page’s IP address, which is a string of numbers, to something simple and memorable for users. A good domain name will connect to your branding and usually references your business name or identity, like squarespace.com.
As a user, you pay a fee to register your domain and tie it to your website, and renew that registration at regular intervals to keep your domain connected.
Read the beginner’s guide to website domains
What is email hosting?
Email hosting is where your emails and messaging files are stored on a server. This is usually done through an email service. Email hosts handle message filtering and security, and store and deliver incoming and outgoing messages, typically in the cloud, so you can access and send mail from multiple devices.
Domain, web, and email hosting often go hand-in-hand. Having a professional email address tied to your domain name can appear more polished, which helps you to build trust and credibility with clients, customers, or partners. It also confirms that your messages are coming from an official source tied to your brand, encourages email opens, and reinforces your branding.
How do domain hosting, web hosting, and email hosting work together?
If your domain is your street address, web hosting is your home, and email hosting is your mailbox. Your domain connects to your web hosting platform, both may connect to your email, and the three work together to build your online presence.
Customers will likely interact with all three in some way. Someone will use your domain to visit your site, where they might buy products or use your services. If they have any queries, they might use your email to get in touch with you.
Understanding how these three things work together can help you solve issues. Say your email server is down, or your website is struggling to load properly. Knowing key differences between the elements ensures you know where to go to address any hiccups.
How these factors impact branding and business
Your domain, website, and email are all part of your brand. Consistency in branding can help your business look unique and professional.
Uniform hosting also helps increase trust from visitors, which aids SEO and AI appearances and can help increase traffic to your site. When these elements are uniform, customers immediately recognize what’s linked to your brand and avoid confusion.
Choosing hosting providers
When building a website, you have the option to have each type of hosting managed by different companies, or purchased and handled in one place. The different options affect the levels of customization and control you’ll have with your platforms.
Think about what you need at this stage. Need for simplicity may lead you to bundled service options. Businesses with complex needs may want to mix and match if one hosting provider offers something that a bundled provider doesn’t. Consider the level of support, ease of use, and your familiarity with hosting before choosing your providers.
Bundling hosting services offers convenience and straightforward support. It can make linking your domain, web, and email hosting easier. And it can make customer service simpler if each hosting method is on one platform. However, bundling could make it trickier if you want to switch hosting providers in the future.
Using separate hosting services gives you flexibility to pick individual services based on your needs. For example, if you run a business that needs more support for email communication, you may want to pick a more powerful email server rather than one that comes provided by a web host. That said, managing multiple hosts can be complicated. Using separate platforms may require more advanced knowledge to configure and integrate all of your servers online.
Managing your domain, web and, email hosting on Squarespace
If you're looking to set your hosting up in one place, Squarespace provides domain, web hosting, and professional email through Google Workspace, so your hosting is smoothly integrated from the start.
Web hosting: All Squarespace website plans come with web hosting. Squarespace handles all site security requirements, optimizations, and necessary updates.
Domains: Squarespace Domains is one of the largest domain registrars. You can search, buy, and manage your domain and connect it to your site from the same Squarespace login.
Email hosting: You can get a custom email address for your Squarespace domain through Google Workspace to easily and professionally handle brand communication.
You can start with any of these hosting options and add to or adapt your hosting to your needs over time. If you start with an annual Squarespace website plan, you’re eligible for a free domain for one year and a free year of Google Workspace.