Domain vs Hosting: What Each One Does and Whether You Need Both
By Manob Editorial ·
A domain is your website's address, such as yourbrand.com. Hosting is the server that stores your site's files and sends them to visitors. You pay for the domain by the year and for hosting separately, usually monthly or yearly. To run a site at your own address you need both, and DNS records connect the two.
What's the difference, in plain terms?
Think of a shop. The domain is the street address printed on your business card. Hosting is the building where the shop actually operates. DNS is the public directory that tells every delivery driver which building that address belongs to.
The two are separate on purpose. You can move the shop to a new building (switch hosts) and keep the address by updating the directory. You can also hold an address with no shop behind it yet. What you can't do is put a shop online at your own address without both.
| Domain name | Web hosting | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A registered name, like yourbrand.com | Server space that stores and serves your site |
| What you're paying for | The right to use the name for the term you pay | Storage, CPU, memory and bandwidth |
| How it's billed | Per year, often paid one to ten years ahead | Monthly or yearly subscription |
| Who sells it | Registrars and their resellers | Hosting companies, cloud providers, site builders |
| If you stop paying | It stops working, then goes back on sale after the grace periods | The host takes your site offline under its own terms |
| Moving it | Transfer it to another registrar | Copy the files and database, then repoint DNS |
What is a domain name?
Computers find each other by number. Every server has an IP address, and DNS exists so people can type a name instead. ICANN, which coordinates the system, gives its own example: people reach it at icann.org rather than the numeric address computers use (ICANN).
Three kinds of company sit behind every domain:
- The registry runs one extension and keeps its master list. Verisign runs .com, for example. Country extensions belong to their countries: .ai is the country-code domain of Anguilla (IANA).
- The registrar is accredited to sell names in that registry and files your registration.
- A reseller sells a registrar's service under its own name, account and support.
You never own a domain outright. You hold the registration for as long as you keep renewing it, which ICANN says is typically one to ten years at a time (ICANN renewal FAQ).
What is web hosting?
Hosting is a computer that's always connected to the internet, with software that answers requests for your site. It stores your HTML, images and database, and runs any code your site needs: PHP for WordPress, Node.js, .NET and so on. The common types:
- Static hosting serves fixed files (HTML, CSS, JavaScript). There's no server code, so it's cheap or free.
- Shared hosting puts many customers on one server managed by the host, with a control panel such as Plesk or cPanel.
- A VPS (virtual private server) gives you your own slice of a server with root access. You run it yourself.
- Builders and platforms host what you make in their tool, so the hosting is part of the product.
Our VPS vs shared hosting comparison covers how to choose between the middle two.
How much do a domain and hosting cost?
A domain is a yearly cost set mostly by its extension. For .com the floor is public: Verisign charges registrars $10.26 a year, rising to $10.97 for new and renewed names from 1 November 2026 (Verisign Q1 2026 release), and ICANN adds $0.20 per domain-year (ICANN FY2026 fees). Retail prices sit above that. Country and specialty extensions often cost more, and .ai has a two-year minimum term. These are manob.ai's live prices:
| Extension | Register | Renews at | Transfer in | Minimum term | Restore after expiry |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| .com | $15.51/yr | $16.09/yr | $20.23 (adds 1 year) | 1 year | $71.29 |
| .net | $17.24/yr | $21.84/yr | $17.24 (adds 1 year) | 1 year | $74.74 |
| .org | $17.01/yr | $20.92/yr | $17.01 (adds 1 year) | 1 year | $84.51 |
| .io | $67.15/yr | $79.91/yr | $67.15 (adds 1 year) | 1 year | $146.96 |
| .co | $35.52/yr | $43.00/yr | $35.52 (adds 1 year) | 1 year | $102.57 |
| .ai | $102.11/yr ($204.22 for 2 years) | $108.32/yr | $216.64 (adds 2 years) | 2 years | $216.64 |
Live manob.ai prices in US dollars, read from the domain checkout. Search a name to see the exact total for your domain.
Read the "Renews at" column as carefully as the first-year price, because that's what you'll pay every year after. Our guide to what a domain name costs explains each column and the fees people miss. To check a name, use manob.ai's domain search. WHOIS privacy is free there and switched on at registration for extensions that allow it, and domains are set to auto-renew by default.
Hosting ranges from free to a meaningful monthly bill. As of October 2026, static sites can be hosted at no charge:
- GitHub Pages is available in public repositories on GitHub Free. Sites can be up to 1 GB with a soft limit of 100 GB of bandwidth a month, and GitHub says Pages isn't meant to run an online business (GitHub Pages limits).
- Netlify's Free plan is listed at "$0 forever" and includes custom domains with SSL, with usage drawn from 300 credits (Netlify pricing).
- Cloudflare Pages on the Free plan allows 500 builds a month and 100 custom domains per project (Cloudflare Pages limits).
Shared hosting and VPS plans are paid. manob.ai sells Linux VPS servers and Windows shared hosting with Plesk. See the hosting plans page for current specs and prices.
Do you need both a domain and hosting?
For a site at your own address, yes. How much hosting you need to arrange depends on what you're building:
- A site built in the manob.ai AI workspace. The workspace deploys the site and issues its HTTPS certificate automatically, so all you add is a domain. Point it with a CNAME record to
gateway.manob.ai, or switch it to manob.ai's nameservers. - A static site, such as one of our HTML5 templates. A free static host plus a domain is enough.
- WordPress, PHP or a database-backed site. You need real hosting that runs PHP and MySQL. Our theme install guide starts from there.
- An ASP.NET site on .NET Framework. It needs Windows hosting with IIS, such as Windows shared hosting on Plesk. ASP.NET Core also runs on Linux (Microsoft Learn).
- Docker apps, Node.js or Python. A VPS, where you control the software.
- Just the name, for now. You can register a domain with no site and keep it for as long as you renew it. It's worth doing as soon as you settle on a business name.
Hosting without a domain also works, but only at the host's address. GitHub Pages, for example, can serve your site on GitHub's github.io domain (GitHub Docs). That's fine for testing. For a business, your own domain is the address you control.
How do a domain and hosting connect?
Through DNS, in one of two ways:
- Change the nameservers. At your registrar, you replace the domain's nameservers with your host's, and the host then manages every record.
- Add records at your current DNS. An A record points the bare domain at the server's IP address, and a CNAME points www (or another name) at a hostname.
Two examples on manob.ai: a workspace site uses a CNAME to gateway.manob.ai, while a Linux VPS uses an A record with the server's IP address. Domains registered on manob.ai start on ns1.manob.ai and ns2.manob.ai, and you can edit the nameservers and DNS records (A, CNAME, MX, TXT) from the domain dashboard. Changes take a few minutes to a day or two to reach everyone. Our step-by-step guide on connecting a domain to hosting covers the records, the wait and how to check them.
Should you buy both from the same company?
It's convenient, not required. Buying both in one place gives you one account and DNS that's often set up for you. Keeping them apart has a practical upside: if you change hosts, you only update DNS, and a billing problem with your host can't put your domain registration at risk.
Either way, the domain is the piece to protect. Use an email address you'll keep, leave auto-renew on and note the renewal date. If you'd rather keep a domain you already have where it is, you can point it at a manob.ai deploy or VPS without moving it. To move it later, see how to transfer a domain from GoDaddy. If you're starting from zero, how to buy a domain name walks through picking and registering one.
Frequently asked questions
Is a domain the same as hosting?
No. The domain is the address people type, and hosting is the server that holds and serves the site. They're bought, billed and renewed separately, even when one company sells both.
Can I buy a domain without hosting?
Yes. A registered domain doesn't need a website behind it. You can hold it, renew it each year and point it at a host whenever you're ready.
Do I lose my domain if I cancel my hosting?
Not if you registered the domain yourself and keep renewing it. Your site goes offline until you point the domain at a new host.
Does a domain come with email?
Not on its own. Email at your domain needs a mail service, which you connect by adding its MX records in your DNS.
What happens if my domain expires?
Your registrar interrupts its DNS, so the site and email stop working, and many registrars offer a renewal grace period. For gTLDs such as .com, a deleted name then enters a 30-day Redemption Grace Period, where restoring it usually costs an extra fee. After that it's released for anyone to register.