Domains and Hosting – What you need to know.

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We get this question all the time. A customer will come in and we’ll be talking about their marketing strategy and website when at some point we mention hosting. Now most of our customers have some idea of what a domain name is but get confused how hosting applies to their project, and really what is it?

Here are two quick definitions to help you figure out what a domain name is and why you need hosting.

Your Domain Name

A domain name is the URL or address that you type into the address bar at the top of your web browser. For example: (thinkbigstudios.ca) is our domain name. A lot of times people tend to type this directly into a google search as well. It’s a good idea to get a domain name that is directly related to your business.

To keep it relatable you can think of your domain name as your street address online. It’s what people are looking for when going to your website.

Your Hosting Account

If your domain name is your street address, your hosting account is your home. It’s where you store all the files for you website. The important thing to remember about your hosting account, is that you want a quality one. You see a lot of $1 and $5 options when it comes to hosting, but that’s a lot like renting a $100 month house vs renting a $800 month house. It’s important to have a quality hosting provider because you want the best uptime you can get. This is the amount of time the server you’re on doesn’t crash and not allow people to email you or view you website.

What a lot of these large hosts like godaddy, vodahost and blue host do, is cram as many people on a server as possible before space is used up and they need to spin up a new server.

We know quality is important to our clients so we work with a company who provides us with a dedicated server only for our clients. That way there’s no over sharing, no crowding and you get top of the line support.

So if you consider your domain is your address and your hosting is your home, it’s an easy way to remember the difference you want an easy to remember domain name that is linked to a quality host to provide the backbone for all of your online marketing endeavors.