Name-First Buying
Web hosting for beginners — Your first hosting account, chosen around the name you intend to keep
Two purchases go through in the same checkout, and only one of them is difficult to reverse later: the name on the invoice.
The short answer
Register the name in your own details, at a registrar you can log into, and treat the hosting as the replaceable half — then put it on a small cPanel plan carrying the free first-year domain, free SSL and one-click WordPress, leaving every larger tier alone until real traffic says what to buy.
Everything below is the working: which record lives where, what the registry clock has just started counting, and how to check any of it for yourself before money moves.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 24 August 2026
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Most first-time buyers treat hosting as the decision and the domain as a tick-box on the way to it. It is the other way round. A hosting account can be swapped in an afternoon with nobody noticing; a name lost through a lapsed renewal, or registered in somebody else's details, can take weeks and a redemption fee to recover, if it comes back at all.
So this page is written from the registrar's side of the counter. It names the buyer — somebody registering their first domain and buying their first plan on the same afternoon — sets out which half is permanent, and makes a recommendation we will defend in the open.
Two purchases, only one of them permanent
A registrar sells you a lease on a name from the registry that runs the ending. A host sells you space and a control panel. They arrive in one basket and they are not the same kind of thing at all.
The hosting is genuinely disposable. Files, database and mailboxes copy across to another provider inside a day, and visitors never learn it happened.
The name is not. It sits in the registry against a registrant record, on a term with a fixed end date, and everything you print, e-mail or hand over on a card points at it. Choose it as though you will be reading it aloud for the next decade, because that is the commitment you are making.
Where your DNS will actually live
The record that sends visitors to your site is held in a zone, and the zone is held by whichever nameservers the name is delegated to. That delegation is set at the registrar, not at the host.
Buy both from us and the delegation is done for you at registration: the name points at our nameservers, cPanel becomes the place you edit the zone, and the certificate issues as soon as the name resolves here.
Keep the name at another registrar and you have a decision to make. Point the nameservers at us and the zone editor in cPanel takes over. Leave the nameservers where they are and the zone stays with them — in which case an edit made in cPanel will look correct and change nothing a visitor can see.
Whichever you choose, write down where the zone lives on the day you set it up. Six months later that one line saves an hour of confusion.
The clock you have just started
A registration is a term, and the term ends. Nothing about that is negotiable, and no host can absorb it for you.
Miss the renewal and the sequence is well established: a grace period of roughly thirty days, then redemption at a steep fee, then, for a name anybody else wants, public auction. Each stage costs more than the renewal that would have avoided it, and each is less certain.
So do two things on day one. Leave auto-renew switched on, and make sure the card behind it is not one that expires first — an expired card is the commonest cause of a lost name. Then put the renewal date in the same calendar you keep company dates in, rather than in your head.
The other date worth knowing: for roughly sixty days after a registration or a transfer, the registry will not let the name move again. That is a standard registry lock rather than anything a provider has done to you.
The plan we would put a first name on
The Sprint plan: one flat rate carrying the SSL, the migration, the daily copy and the mailboxes this market prefers to bill separately, on NVMe storage behind a LiteSpeed cache, with in-place upgrades ready when the work picks up.
Order it annually and the first year of the name's registration is included, recorded in your details, renewing afterwards at our ordinary list price rather than an inflated bundle rate.
The hosting rate you order at is the rate you renew at, so year two costs precisely what year one did. Two renewal dates, both predictable — which is the whole of what a first-time buyer needs from this decision.
Check us the way you would check any registrar. Ask us who the registrant will be on a name registered through us. Ask what the name renews at. Ask whether we will release it on request once the sixty days lift. A provider that answers those three plainly is a provider you can hand a domain to.
Then look the company up: we trade as Hosting & Domains, and the company behind it is Azaanex Inc., number 1766541-5, federally incorporated in Canada and on the public record.
The refund window covers the rest. Bring a live site over, let the free migration do the moving, work it for two real weeks, and let ordinary use answer what no sales page can.
Why we keep saying registrar and host as two separate words
The registry runs the ending and sets the rules. The registrar is accredited to sell registrations under it. A reseller sells through a registrar. A host serves the pages. Confusing any two of those is how people end up unable to find the setting they need.
We do all of it, which is convenient, but the distinction still matters on the day you want to move one half and keep the other.
- The registration in your own details, from day one
- Delegation set for you, and reversible on request
- Renewal rates published, not footnoted
- The zone editable in cPanel, once the name points here
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
The registrant is you
A name registered through us is recorded in your details, not held on your behalf in ours — which is what makes it yours to move later.
A registrant you can look up
Azaanex Inc., number 1766541-5, federally incorporated in Canada — read the filing before you hand anybody a domain.
Year one of the name included
Order an annual plan and the first year's registration comes with it, renewing afterwards at ordinary list price.
Delegation you can reverse
Point the name at us today and away again whenever you like; nothing here depends on holding your nameservers hostage.
This page's conclusion, orderable
The Sprint plan is this page's conclusion in product form — one rate, essentials inside, upgradeable in place.
Support you can test before paying
Put a domain question to us before you buy — how a registrar answers pre-sale is the best it will ever treat you.
Prices Side by Side
How our prices sit against the majors
What the market typically charges to join and to renew, set beside ours, including the renewal figure most comparison charts leave out.
| Feature | Hosting & DomainsMost popular | Typical household-name host | Typical bargain host | Typical loss-leader deal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price / mo* | $2.42/mo | $4–$6 | $2–$4 | $1–$3 |
| Renewal price / mo | $2.42/mo | $10–$15 | $8–$12 | $4–$6 |
| Entry-level plan renews at the price you signed up at | ||||
| SSL as standard | ||||
| Migration done for you | ||||
| NVMe drives on the entry-level tier | ||||
| Backups run every day from the first tier up | ||||
| Real humans on support, 24/7 |
*Our own column shows the lowest-priced annual plan on our books, pulled live from the same catalogue that feeds the pricing page, which is why it cannot go stale. Beside it sit three columns holding the ranges that hosts in each bracket tend to advertise: introductory rates that normally ask for one to four years up front, then climb once the term runs out. Naming rivals and printing their figures is something we gave up, since a price nobody can verify on the day you happen to read this has no business on the page. Measure us against the host you are actually weighing up, and give the renewal row the hardest look of the lot.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Settle the name before the plan
Say it out loud, spell it down a telephone, check the ending you actually want is free. The plan can change later; this is the part that cannot.
- 2
Write down where the zone will live
One line: which nameservers the name is delegated to, and therefore which control panel edits its records. Nearly every DNS mystery traces back to not knowing this.
- 3
Diarise the renewal, then test the host
Auto-renew on, card in date, renewal date in the calendar. Only then start judging the hosting, which the refund window lets you do with a real site.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- The first year of the name's registration included on annual plans
- Registration recorded in your own details, transferable when the registry lock lifts
- Free SSL on every plan, reissued before the old certificate lapses
- A daily copy, with restores you run yourself from the panel
- Mailboxes that answer at the name you hold
- cPanel, which is what most of the industry already runs
- A hosting renewal figure identical to the one you registered at
- 99.9% uptime as the target, watched around the clock
- No set-up charge at any point, and no joining fee
- Money back within 30 days on hosting plans, 7 on reseller
Frequently Asked
Questions we field again and again
Whose details should the domain be registered in?
Yours, or your company's — never a designer's, never an agency's, never a platform's. The registrant record is the closest thing a domain has to a title deed, and the person named on it is the person the registry will listen to. If somebody else registered your name for you, correcting that record is worth doing now rather than during an argument.
Do the name and the hosting have to come from the same company?
No, and plenty of careful people deliberately split them. Buying both here is simply less to manage: one login, one invoice, delegation already set. Buying the name elsewhere costs you nothing but a nameserver change, which takes a minute at your registrar.
What actually happens if I miss the renewal date?
Roughly thirty days of grace, during which the name usually stops resolving and a renewal still recovers it. Then redemption, which the registry charges a steep fee to unwind. Then, if the name has any value to anybody else, auction. Auto-renew and an in-date card make the whole sequence irrelevant.
Can I move the site later without the name going dark?
Yes, and that is the normal way of it. The old host keeps answering until the delegation changes, so you build the new copy first, check it, then repoint. Resolvers that already hold the old answer keep using it until the record's TTL runs down, which is the whole of what people mean by propagation.
Keep reading
Web Hosting
cPanel hosting on NVMe drives, with the delegation set at registration and year one of the name included.
Secure Hosting
Isolated accounts and hardened defaults, for a first name you would rather not have to recover.
Changing provider? Work through this checklist beforehand.
A straightforward running order for a migration your visitors never spot: which files travel first, how to bring the mail across without dropping a single message, the right moment to repoint DNS, and the two errors that sit behind almost every outage we get called in to fix.
Register it in your own name, then build on it.
Year one of the name on annual plans, free SSL, a free migration, and a hosting renewal at the rate you ordered at.
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