Must Domain Names Be Hosted? (Solved & Explained)

When establishing your presence on the Internet, web companies will offer you all-in packages that cover your domain name registration, hosting, and custom emails for your business.

While many of these packages are a great value for your money, you might ask yourself if you need all these services.

What if you already have a dedicated server or webpage when all you need is just the domain name?

Does a domain name have to be hosted?

You don’t need hosting when buying a domain. For a domain name to function, it needs to point to a page on the Internet. When registering for a domain name, ask for pricing for that only includes domain name registration and possibly email.

Do I Need Hosting if I Have a Domain Name?

No. But a domain name needs to point at something for the domain name to work.

For instance, if you have an Amazon or Etsy page, you can buy a domain name and point it to your shop.

In this case, Amazon or Etsy acts as your host, and your shop home page being the landing page of the domain name.

Remember that domain names are the coordinates that point your audience where to go.

How Do You Register a Domain Without Paying for Hosting?

When registering for a domain name, ask for pricing for that only includes domain name registration and possibly email.

What is the Price Difference if You Do Not Get Hosting for Your Domain?

The difference is not that big if you are getting only a domain, instead of domain and hosting.

Domain name registration can go as low as 10 dollars a year while hosting can be as cheap as 31 dollars a year.

Having a combined domain registration and hosting can save you an average of six (6) dollars a year, at basic tier packages.

What Can You Do With a Domain if You Do Not Buy Hosting?

If you decide not to get hosting when you register for a domain, you can do the following:

Have Your Domain Name Point to an Online Store that You Manage

If you want your audience to automatically visit your store when they look for you, consider buying a domain name and point it to your shop’s home page.

This would be ideal, especially if you manage a brand that is strong on retail or would want your audience to immediately see all your products in a platform for easy checkout.

Use Your Domain Name to Bring your Audience to Your Official Social Media Page

If you are a social media personality, you can buy a domain name to automatically divert your audience to your chosen social media.

If you are a YouTuber, you can have your channel appear when people type in your domain name.

The same can be said if you are a photographer, who capitalizes on Instagram, to display his craft.

Control the Use of Your Brand’s Name

Big brands often buy different domain names and have them all point to one website.

If you are wary that other people may misrepresent your brand’s name, you can consider buying all possible domain names available so that no one else may use them.

Of course, this comes with extra costs and will involve you looking for all possible permutations of your brand’s name and top-level domains. Remember that each top-level domain and name corresponds to one domain name.

So if you have a domain named searchforcar.com, that would also mean search4car.net will be another domain name to pay for.

Get a Custom Email Address With Your Brand’s Name

You can stand to look more professional with the emails you send when your email address has your brand on it.

People will tend to remember you more when they see your brand’s name on your email address, instead of a generic address taken from a free email service.

Do Domain Registrations Come with Email?

No. But as a way to entice clients, domain and server providers often provide free custom email addresses based on the domain name registered.

What is the Difference Between a Domain with and Without Hosting?

Domain without hosting is just a name.

You need not have the space to put up your website, and the only thing you can do is just point it at an existing webpage you have. You can also get registration for a custom email.

Meanwhile, domain with hosting offers you the complete deal, including servers, to upload your contents.

Do I Need Web Hosting to Use the Domain for Email?

You can get a custom email name for your brand without web hosting.

If you need email hosting services, you will have to signup for a server to host the emails that come in.

Should I Get my Domain Registration and Hosting as a Package?

Having a one-stop-shop for your website needs may seem tempting.

You only need to have a single payment arrangement, and this would mean only having one set of credentials to log into when fixing your website.

But there may be some disadvantages to this, which can compromise your site’s security. One, should things not work out with your domain registrar or hosting, you can easily move out and update your registration or settings.

Moving both will be a tedious process, and may disrupt your business operations.

As it is, domain registration transfer can be time-consuming and may take weeks to take effect. Another reason would be security. If hackers infiltrate your website while your domain and hosting are under one company, you can lose your whole site.

Hackers can take down your content, replace it with materials of their choice, and even redirect it to another domain.

Having two sets of credentials for your website provides higher security for you. This means hackers will have to break into two different credentials before they can vandalize your site.

What Should I Look for in Domain Registration?

Should you decide to go for only domain registration, you need to make sure you are getting your money’s worth.

You should look for the following when domain registration:

Legitimacy:

Make sure that the domain registrar is accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

ICANN is the regulatory body that handles name registration around the Internet.

Dealing with registrars that are accredited by ICANN will assure you of security in the event you have problems with your domain name registration. This is why you need to signup only with those accredited by the body as you are guaranteed security.

Dealing with the less than reputable will only cause headaches later on, should you decide to switch registrars, and will be harder when someone steals your domain name.

Reliable Technical Support:

If you are having domain name issues, you have to make sure that the registrar has good technical support to assist you when people could not access your domain.

Ideally, you would want to have something with round the clock and chat support to save on time and money.

But if you are unsure of that, you can check what other people are saying.

Easy to Use DNS Configuration Panels:

You need to make sure that the DNS control panel of your domain can be easy to navigate.

This will come in handy when you set up or troubleshoot your domain.

Having an error-ridden system is a red flag and should be avoided.

Domain Locking and Security:

To avoid your domain name is transferred, whether intentional or by accident, make sure your domain registrar offers to lock.

Go for a registrar who can limit accessing these high-security features to a select few, so that your domain cannot be tampered with. Also, you may want to look into WHOIS concealing.

This will make sure that when your domain is looked up for owner information, your information will be hidden and replaced with the registrars.

Email Hosting:

Maintaining your email servers can be another task that you may want to delegate elsewhere.

As it is, it will cost extra infrastructure on your end, so you may want to outsource it to a company that can easily expand their servers with your needs.

Go for a registrar who can provide email hosting so that you don’t have to handle everything on your end. Doing so lessens the stress you need to manage for your web-related duties.

Also, make sure the registrar has strict data privacy measures to protect the data in your emails.

Pricing:

Price is everything. At the end of the day, the price will dictate whether you will get the service.

You can have the best and most secure system, but if it is exorbitant, you may want to look elsewhere. If you are offered a slew of features for the price of peanuts, you might be overlooking something, as there may be hidden charges.

To give you an idea, the reputable domain registrars offer competitive services between 15 – 20 dollars a year.

Anything above it may be too much, so it’s best to scrutinize these packages and registrars before forking over your payment details.

References:

Why You Shouldn’t Register Domains With Your Web Host

How Much Does It Cost to Host a Website?

Ten things to look for in a domain registrar