Domain and hosting, explained plainly

Two words come up whenever you build a website, and they are often left unexplained: domain and hosting. They are not complicated, and understanding them protects you from the most common way small businesses lose control of their own site. Here they are in plain terms, along with the one rule that matters most.

The domain is your address

Your domain is the name people type to reach you: yoursite.com. It is your address on the internet and part of your identity, the thing on your business card and your sign. You rent it, usually a year at a time, from a registrar, for a small yearly fee. Nobody else can have the same one while it is yours. Your email can run on it too, which is part of why it matters so much.

Hosting is where the site lives

Hosting is the space where your website actually sits and is served from when someone visits. If the domain is the address, hosting is the building at that address. You pay for it monthly or yearly, and for a small hospitality site it does not need to be expensive or powerful. The two work together: the domain points to the hosting, so that typing your name brings up your site.

What they should cost

A domain is usually a few hundred baht a year. Hosting for a small hotel, restaurant or cafe site is modest, often around a thousand baht a month or less, sometimes bundled with the site. Be wary of two things: hosting you cannot leave without losing your site, and an arrangement where paying the monthly fee is the only way to edit your own pages. Neither is normal, and both are how you get trapped.

The one rule: own them in your own name

This is the part that matters more than anything else here. Your domain and your hosting should be registered in your name, in accounts you control, even if someone else manages them day to day. When they are, your site is portable: you can change who builds or maintains it and take everything with you. When the domain is in your web builder's name, you do not truly own your own address or email, and leaving them can mean losing both. Ask, in writing, whose name the domain is in, before you pay anyone. It is the single most important question, and the one least often asked.

Why this ties to owning your site

Domain and hosting are half of what it means to actually own your website; the other half is the code and the content. A site built for you that you own outright behaves differently from a rented page-builder you can never leave, and the difference shows up precisely on the day you want to move. It is worth getting right at the start, and it costs nothing to insist on.

If you are not sure who currently owns your domain or where your site is hosted, that is worth finding out today. Tell us what you have now and we will help you work out what you hold and what you should, no strings attached.