What is the difference between a domain and

What is a domain?

A domain name is the human-readable part of a web address, such as example.com. It gives people a memorable way to reach a service without needing to remember an IP address.

Registering a domain does not create the website itself. It gives you control over that name for the registration period and lets you configure where the name points.

What is hosting?

Web hosting is a service or server environment where website files, application code, and sometimes databases are stored or executed. When someone visits the domain, the hosting environment is responsible for responding to the request.

Different projects need different hosting arrangements. A simple static site can use a very different setup from a web application that needs server-side code, a database, background jobs, or file storage.

How they work together

Think of the domain as the address and hosting as the place where the website is delivered from. DNS connects the domain name to the infrastructure that should answer requests.

They can be purchased from the same company or from different companies. Keeping them separate can be useful because changing hosting does not require changing the domain name.

What you actually need

For a public website, you generally need a domain name and a hosting or deployment environment. You may also need email hosting, a database, a CDN, storage, or other services depending on what the site does.

Sources and further reading

Frequently asked questions