Domain and hosting are often mentioned together, and sometimes sold together, which causes a lot of confusion. They're two different things — and you need both for a working website.
Your domain is your address
A domain name is the address people type to find your website — for example, nc-digital.co.uk. It's how visitors and search engines identify your site on the internet.
Buying a domain gives you the rights to use that address. It doesn't give you anywhere to put a website — it's just the name.
Hosting is where your website lives
Hosting is the service that stores your website files and makes them accessible when someone visits your address. Think of it like this: the domain is your street address, and the hosting is the building that actually stands there.
Without hosting, your domain points to nothing. Without a domain, visitors have no address to reach your hosting. Both are required for a website to work.
Do they have to be from the same company?
No — your domain and hosting can be with completely different providers. Many businesses register a domain with one company and host their website with another. The two are connected through a setting called DNS (Domain Name System), which tells your domain where to find the hosting server.
When NC Digital builds and hosts your website, we handle this connection as part of the setup — you don't need to understand DNS to get it working.
What about email?
Your domain is also what your business email address is based on — you@yourbusiness.co.uk. Email hosting is separate from website hosting, though they both use the same domain. See our professional business email service for how that works.
Hosting with NC Digital
Our website hosting is £20/month or £220/year for custom and WordPress sites, and includes SSL, Cloudflare CDN, daily backups, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. If you're on one of our managed starter websites, hosting is included as part of the package.
Get in touch if you need help sorting your domain or hosting.