Let’s start by saying the main takeaway you should have from this article – it’s important that you keep your web host and domain registration separate. Before getting into why we’ll start by defining what the two terms mean and why they are the foundation of any successful website.
First, domain registration is a sort of redirection work, such as ebay.com – that directs people to the files of a particular website through an internet browser. As part of it, there are different domain extensions such as .com, .net, .org, .inc, and many more.
The web host is the account on a server that stores website files and serves them to users through the internet. It’s a kind of file storage. Think of Dropbox, but it’s connected to the network and serves files to internet users (site visitors).
Another way to describe it is that the domain of a website is its internet “address”, while the hosting is the “land” that the website is built. Now we’ll look at the reasons you should have separate domain and hosting providers.
Holding Your Hosting or Domain as a Hostage
Many hosting and domain registration services offer the two tied together in confusing and obnoxious ways.
If you want to cancel just your hosting, you may find that your domain has become more expensive. Or perhaps the domain is canceled with the hosting because everything was offered as a “bundle”.
Keeping your registrar and web host separate allows you to prevent this kind of thing from happening. It stops one company from having so much leverage against you.
Easier to Switch Web Host Provider Service
Having fewer service commitments makes it easier to change web hosting providers. Why is it important?
If you are getting downtimes from your current web hosting supplier, are disappointed with the lack of support, paying too much for renewal, or facing a similar problem, you’ll have an easier time changing hosts without impacting your domain. All you have to do is move the files across to the new host and redirect the DNS settings.
Separate Security from the File Management
Companies typically specialize in either hosting or domain registration, and not both. It’s hard to find a company that can excel at both at the same time.
The very best domain registrar services offer privacy, advanced DNS settings, sub-accounts, and other benefits. The best web hosting companies have great file management, backups, site-lock features, and more. It’s good to have separate accounts for domain and hosting to get the best of both worlds.
Hacking Your Account or Website
Let’s assume that you have your domain and web host handled by the same company. What happens if the hosting website gets hacked or something happens to your host or website? What if someone stole your files and your domain and injected malware, or your hosting company locked your account? That means you lose access to your web domain too.
By keeping domain and hosting separate, you have an easier time dealing with these problems without affecting your domain. You’ll still have access to your domain dashboard and are in control.
Several Domains Support and Control
So you’ve got multiple domains, each of which is hosted on a different service. This makes it easier to manage your domains all under one roof as you can manage several domains all from a single account.
Keep Problems and Concerns Separate
Will your host provider still be in business in five more years? Will your domain provider? By keeping your registrar and web host separate like this, you reduce the risk of a total and complete outage. Especially true if you went with EIG hosting.
Summary – Separate Hosting and Domain Registrar
If you are considering a website project, then it’s critical to understand the difference between domain registration and web hosting and the way they work together but also acts like different products.
A domain is critical to any website project — whether you go with a hosting company or bundled services so you must learn how to buy a domain name.
We also understood that it’s recommended to separate the web hosting solution and the domain registrar. But, what solution should we go with?
For a web hosting provider, we recommend DreamHost. They are a global, SSD-based, non-EIG hosting service and provide a free SSL (by Let’s Encrypt) with great support and uptimes. Check out our DreamHost review.
As for domain registrar, we are fans of NameCheap, which is an affordable domain service with constant pricing, quick support, features rich, and 14-day money-back guarantees. Look into our domain registrar’s review.
My website is hosted on DreamHost which I really like due to its stability and helpful support. Furthermore, their servers are extremely reliable, secure and fast, I don't remember when the last time we had a server downtime. If you sourcing for a great hosting service, go grab it.
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Yes, I do this. My domain and my web hosting are not located in the same company.
I have a question. Can I point a domain to two web hostings by adding A records in my DNS Records? What happens if I do that?
In general, you can, with a configuration called Round Robin DNS. What will happen? It will distribute the visitors that try to access your site (domain name) to about 50% of all visitors to HOSTING-A and the other 50% of visitors to HOSTING-B.
Thank you for answering my question.
Thank you very much for this very clear and helpful post.
I have a question which I suspect others may run into as well. I’m already sold on the idea of keeping domain registration and hosting separate, but I’m a noob so I’m getting lost in the details of how to achieve it.
My host asked me to change the nameservers at my registrar. I did that, but now I am asking myself: what does it imply for my DNS records? Where are they now, still with the registrar or now with the host?
And especially: does that matter? Do I only need to avoid transferring the domain name to the host, or do I need to make sure that the DNS records keep being handled by the registrar?
Hi Syb, from your perspective, the only thing you need to do when you separate your hosting services and the domain registrar is to update the DNS records on the registrar, with the ones of your web hosting provider.
So it’s a pretty simple and straightforward action, to guarantee this separation of concerns.
For example, my domains are registred with Namecheap, and my hosting is DreamHost, so the only thing I have to do, is to set the nameservers on the registrar side to:
ns1.dreamhost.com
ns2.dreamhost.com
ns3.dreamhost.com