What is a domain name? A plain guide for business owners
A domain name is the address people type to reach your business online, like smithplumbing.com, and the part after the @ in your business email. It is not the website itself. You rent it by the year from a company called a registrar, and as long as you keep renewing it, nobody else can use it. Knowing the difference between the domain, the website and the hosting is what lets you change any one of them without losing the others.
The three things owners mix up
Most confusion about websites comes from three separate things being sold together and called one name.
The domain name is the address. Think of it like your business's street address. It tells people where to go, but it is not the building.
The website is the building: the pages, text, photos, contact form and buttons a visitor sees.
The hosting is the land the building stands on: the computers, somewhere in a data center, that store your website and send it to visitors' phones and computers when they ask for it.
You can move the building to new land and keep the same address. You can tear down the building and put up a new one at the same address. That is exactly what happens when you get a new website: the domain stays, the site behind it changes.
Website builders like Wix and Squarespace bundle all three, which is convenient but makes it easy to forget they are separate. What is web hosting? explains the hosting part in more detail.
The parts of a domain name
Take www.harborbakery.com as an example.
- harborbakery is the name you chose. It can contain letters, numbers and hyphens.
- .com is the ending, which the trade calls a top-level domain. Others include .net, .org, .us and newer ones like .shop or .plumbing.
- www is an optional part in front, called a subdomain. Most sites work with or without it.
Together, harborbakery.com is your domain. You can also create other addresses under it, like shop.harborbakery.com or book.harborbakery.com, without paying for a new domain.
Who you get it from
Domain names are rented from registrars: companies accredited to sell them, such as GoDaddy, Namecheap, Network Solutions, Squarespace, Cloudflare and many others. Above them, a non-profit called ICANN sets the rules for the whole system, and separate organizations run each ending.
When you register a domain, you pay for one or more years. At the end of the term, you renew. If you stop paying, the domain expires, and after a grace period anyone can register it. That includes people who buy expired business domains to resell them or to use the old reputation.
What you are paying for is the right to use the name, and the registrar's job of pointing it where you tell it to. The price is usually modest per year for a .com, though introductory prices often rise at renewal.
How a domain points to your website
When someone types your domain, their device has to find out which computer holds your website. It asks the internet's address book, a system called DNS (the domain name system). Your domain's DNS settings say, in effect, "the website for harborbakery.com lives at this computer, and email for harborbakery.com goes to that one".
Those settings live with whichever company your domain uses for DNS, usually the registrar. When you get a new website, someone changes the website line in those settings to point at the new site. When it is done carefully, nothing else changes.
That is also why domains and email are connected. Your email addresses on your domain, like [email protected], work because the DNS settings tell other mail servers where to deliver mail for your domain. Change the wrong line and email stops. DNS explained for small business owners shows what those lines are, without jargon.
Who owns your domain
The person or business named as the registrant on the domain is its legal holder. The person who controls the registrar account is who can actually change or move it. Ideally both are you, or your business.
Often they are not. Web designers and agencies frequently register domains for clients under their own accounts, and sometimes in their own name. It works fine until you want to change designers. Who owns my domain? How to check shows how to find out in a few minutes.
What a domain does not include
A domain on its own gives you an address and nothing else. It does not include:
- A website. You need one built and hosted somewhere, and the domain pointed at it.
- Email. Some registrars include basic email forwarding; a real mailbox is usually a separate service, such as Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.
- Security for the site. The padlock comes from a certificate set up on the website's side.
- A place in search results. Google treats the domain as an address. What appears in search depends on what is at the address.
Common domain questions, answered briefly
Can I have more than one domain? Yes. Some businesses buy a misspelling or a second ending and forward it to the main one. It is optional. Should you buy several domains for your business? helps you decide.
Can I change my domain later? Yes, but it takes care: old addresses have to keep forwarding to the new ones for years.
Can I move my domain to a different registrar? Yes, usually with a transfer code from your current registrar. Your website and email keep working if the DNS settings move with it.
Do I need a domain to have a website? No. Many builders give you a free address on their own domain. For a business, your own is usually better, mostly because of email and because you can take it anywhere.
What to do this week
- Find out which registrar holds your domain, and log in.
- Check the domain is in your name or your business's name.
- Turn on auto-renew and update the card on file.
- Note the expiry date in your calendar anyway, a month before it.
- Write down where your website is hosted and where your email is, so you know which three companies you depend on.
If your domain is fine but the website at that address is showing its age, you can see your site rebuilt first; your domain and email stay where they are until you decide to switch.