Domain Name Web Hosting

What Is Domain Name Web Hosting?

It's easy to be confused about domain name web hosting. After all, since one can just say "domain hosting" or even "web hosting," it is really not clear what it means. The reason for this is that the term domain name web hosting is most often used in opposition to another type of hosting in which the user does not have and/or is not allotted a domain name that is registered to them. This second kind of hosting is subdomain hosting, in which the customer uses a subdomain of a domain name owned by the web hosting company.

There's one more important facet. The term domain name web hosting is almost always used in free web hosting situations, which often have the limitation that clients cannot use their own domain name. Web hosts who offer free web hosting that do allow customers to use a domain they have registered themselves, use the term domain name web hosting to distinguish themselves from the others who only offer subdomain hosting (although this term is not always used). In this context, the term domain name web hosting makes sense.

Once you go beyond free web hosting services, however, the customer's registration of a domain name goes without saying, so web hosts don't have to refer to their hosting as "domain name web hosting." The customer may get a web hosting package thrown in with a domain name registration, get a free domain name registration with their web hosting package, or register a domain name with a registrar and host their website elsewhere, but in any case, the customer's website is hosted with the customer's unique domain name. So if you see the term domain name web hosting, it's probably referring to free web hosting.

What to Look for in Domain Name Web Hosting

If you are searching for domain name web hosting, aka free web hosting that allows the use of a customer's registered domain name, you should be sure to find out how the web host is thinking it's going to make money from your site, because there's no such thing as a free website.

Web hosts take various approaches to getting something back from you when they give you free web hosting. When you use a subdomain, every visitor to your site sees their name in the URL, but once you're using your own domain name, they have to take a different strategy. This may involve plastering your site with advertising, making you pay for anything more than a pittance of bandwidth or disk storage space that you're virtually (pun intended) guarantee to exceed, or offering such stellar service that as your website grows, you're likely to stick with them with an upgraded plan that you do pay for.

The other important things to consider are whether the company is likely to stay in business for the life of your website, their uptime and security, the technical support available and the time it takes to deliver it, and backups. Backups are essential not only for day to day security, but also for you to be able to move your site to another host if you wish.