The domain
The domain is your site's address, like yourbusiness.com. It's registered with a registrar, renewed year by year and can be transferred from one provider to another. It should be registered to you or your company: whoever holds the registration controls it.
Hosting
Hosting is the service that stores your site's files and sends them to visitors. It should be fast, secure, with HTTPS active and up to date. Static sites, without a database, can live on very fast distributed networks around the world and have fewer things to protect.
Professional email
An address like name@yourbusiness.com inspires more trust than a free address. Mailboxes are set up with an email service and connected to the domain. Some technical settings (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) help your emails stay out of spam: they need to be configured properly.
What to check
Keep a list of services, access details and renewal dates somewhere safe. Switch on automatic renewal wherever possible. And check now and then that the domain really is registered to you: the registrant's name can be checked in the domain's public records.
- Domain registrant
- Domain, hosting and email renewal dates
- Access details kept somewhere safe
- Automatic renewals switched on