What is domain and hosting? – A simple explanation

As we all live in a digital era, you might have heard these terms before. People often confuse these terms or don’t really understand them. So, If you are one of them, don’t worry, we have got your back. Just follow along, we will answer all your questions like what a domain and a hosting is, what is their use and why do we need it?

Now, Imagine you run a grocery shop. So, how will you tell your customers where your shop is? You have to tell them the location where you have your shop. So, that’s what a domain name does.

Domain

A domain is nothing but the address of your website in the digital world. It is used to uniquely identify your website’s identity among tons of websites over the internet.

How do domains work

Every website on the internet has a unique 32-bit IP address. It is something like this 172.217.166.238. This is nothing but the IP address of google.com. Now, Imagine you have to remember this confusing string for the website you want to visit. Nightmare right??

But we have DNS (Domain name system) to the rescue. DNS resolves an IP address to the domain name so that when you type a domain name in a web browser, It will automatically convert that domain to its IP address and provides you with the page you are looking for.

Why do we need it?

The domain acts as your identity in the world of the internet. It is your domain only by which you or your business will be identified. So, it is very important that you choose the right domain name for your business that reflects what your business is all about.

Types of Domain

1. Top-level Domain (TLD)

These are at the top of the domain name hierarchy. TLDs refer to the right side of the dot (.). Below is the list of TLD.

Eg. : google.com, thegeeksarena.com.

• .com – commercial business (The most common TLD)
• .org – organizations (For nonprofit organizations)
• .gov – government agencies
• .edu – educational institutions (schools, colleges)
• .net – network organizations
• .mil – military

2. Country code Top-level domain (CcTLD)

These are associated with a particular country. They are used when you want to let your user know about the country you operate in. Examples are .in for India, .fr for France, .cn for China, .us for USA and so on.

3. Generic Top-level domain

gTLDs act as categories of the Top-level domains. They define the class to which a domain name associates.

General purpose domains – (.com, .info, .org).

Sponsored domains – (.edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .mobi, .coop, .travel, .tel)

And so on.

4. Second-level domain

Second level domains are on the left side of the dot (.). These are generally the name of the business that owns the domain.

For example in amazon.com, Amazon is the second-level domain.

5. Third-level domain

Third-level domains are the part of the domain that is separated from second-level domains by a dot (.). They are found on the left of the second-level domain popularly known as subdomains.

Hosting

Now you have a shop, But there must be some place in which you have built your shop, The land. Land for a shop here is analogous to space your website takes on the server to store the data.

Web hosting can also be of different types like shared, dedicated, cloud, and so on. For more details visit Different types of web hosting.

In order to build a website, you need a domain and a hosting both. There are different service providers like go daddy, google domains, hostinger, and others in the market through which you can buy a perfect domain and hosting for your website. Their prices will differ based on various factors like speed, bandwidth, storage, and so on. Choose the plan as per your need.