If you’ve ever felt lost when someone mentions “DNS” or asked who’s hosting your site, you’re not alone. Most business owners in trades, construction and engineering have better things to do than learn web jargon. But these three things, your domain, your DNS and your hosting, control whether your website and email actually work. Here’s what each one does and why it matters.
Your domain is your address
Think of your domain (like yourbusiness.com.au) as your street address on the internet. You buy it, usually for one or two years at a time, from a domain registrar. Common ones in Australia include VentraIP, Crazy Domains and GoDaddy.
Owning your domain matters more than most people realise. If it lapses or someone else takes control of it, you can lose your website, your email and years of Google rankings overnight. We always recommend our clients keep their own domain account, even when we manage everything else for them.
DNS is the signpost that points people in the right direction
DNS (Domain Name System) tells the internet where to send people when they type in your domain. Think of it as a signpost network. When someone visits yourbusiness.com.au, DNS records point their browser to the right server so your website loads. When someone emails , different DNS records make sure it lands in your inbox and not in a spam folder somewhere.
Get DNS wrong and you can end up with a website that won’t load, emails that bounce, or worse, emails that quietly stop arriving without anyone noticing for weeks.
Hosting is where your website lives
Hosting is the server space where all your website’s files, images and pages are stored. Without hosting, there’s nothing for DNS to point to. Your host also affects how fast your site loads, how secure it is and how it copes when a lot of people visit at once, say, after you’ve handed out flyers at a trade show.
If we're building your website, here's what to consider
If we’re currently working on your new site, there are a couple of things worth sorting early. One of the biggest causes of delay in launching a new website is waiting on domain and hosting details. It’s a simple fix, and there are only three ways to handle it:
- Send us your existing login details for your domain registrar and hosting, if you have them.
- Let us set up hosting for you from scratch, so you don’t have to touch it at all.
- Point us to your IT provider. If an external IT provider manages your DNS and hosting, just introduce us to your IT contact. We’ll coordinate the migration and website launch directly with them, so you’re not stuck relaying messages between two suppliers.
Whichever applies to you, there’s no wrong answer. We just need to know which one, so we can get started straight away instead of chasing details later.
Where this usually goes wrong
In our experience, most website hiccups after launch come down to one of these things:
- The client owns a domain through an old provider, forgets the login, and can’t make changes when needed
- DNS records get set up once and never checked again, even when something changes on the hosting side
- Nobody’s sure who’s actually responsible for renewing hosting each year
- Email suddenly stops working because a DNS record expired or was changed by mistake
None of these are complicated problems. They just fall through the cracks because they’re easy to forget until something breaks.
What we recommend
A few simple habits go a long way:
- Know who owns what. Keep a note of where your domain is registered, who manages your DNS and who hosts your website. If you’re not sure, ask us and we’ll find out for you.
- Set a renewal reminder. Domains and hosting plans usually renew annually. Missing a renewal is one of the most common, and most avoidable, causes of a site going down.
- Don’t touch DNS without checking first. If you’re not confident with it, get in touch before making changes. A wrong setting can take down your website and email at the same time.
- Keep your login details somewhere safe. If we’re managing your site, we’ll always make sure you have access too. It’s your business and your domain.
Get in touch
If you’re not sure who owns your domain, who’s hosting your site, or which of the three options above suits you best, just get in touch. We’ll check your current setup and let you know exactly where things stand.
