Hosting Terms, for Name Holders
Web hosting holds the files; the name only points at them
You hold a name and somebody has asked you to buy hosting for it — this explains which of the two you are actually buying, and what joins them.
The short answer
Web hosting is the rented half of a website: a machine that keeps the files, the database and the mailboxes, while the domain name is a separate registration that merely tells the world which machine to ask. Two contracts, two suppliers, two renewal dates, joined by a handful of DNS records.
That separation is the useful part. Hosting can be changed without touching the name, and the name can outlive any host you ever use — provided the delegation and the renewal are both looked after.
By the Hosting & Domains team · Reviewed 18 August 2026
100+
Terms defined for people who hold names
2 min
To read, at an unhurried pace
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English, with the registry jargon translated
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Cover on the support desk, all year
The name is registered at a registry through a registrar; the files sit on a machine belonging to a host. Nothing physically connects the two. What connects them is delegation — the NS records the registry publishes for your name — and then, inside whichever zone that delegation reaches, an A record carrying an IP address.
Because the join is only a record, either half can be replaced on its own. Move host and you edit a record. Move registrar and the files never notice. The one thing that ends both at once is the name lapsing, because no host on earth can serve a name the registry has taken back.
Two invoices, two clocks
The hosting bill and the domain bill run on separate clocks, and only one of them has a registry behind it. Miss a hosting renewal and the account is suspended, then reinstated when you pay; the files sit there in the meantime. Miss a domain renewal and the registry takes over: grace period, then redemption at several times the fee, then auction.
Keep both dates in the same calendar, then treat them differently. Hosting is a commercial relationship you can restart. A name, once it has gone through redemption and out the other side, may be genuinely unrecoverable at any price.
Where the join actually lives
Ask the registry what it publishes for the name before you assume anything: dig NS example.com +short returns the nameservers delegation currently points at. Whatever answers there is authoritative, and that is the only zone whose A record decides which server a browser visits.
This is why editing DNS in a hosting panel sometimes does nothing at all. The panel will happily store a zone for a name whose delegation points somewhere else entirely, and the stored zone is simply never consulted.
What breaks first when hosting ends
Email, almost always. Files going dark is obvious within minutes and somebody notices; mail failing is quiet, because the sender gets the bounce and you do not. If the MX record still points at a host you have left, post addressed to your name is being delivered into a mailbox nobody opens.
The order that avoids it: create the mailboxes at the new host, move the site, change the A record, and only then move the MX. Leave the old account paid up for a fortnight afterwards so anything still in flight has somewhere to land.
How the two halves sit here
In this account the name and the plan are separate line items with separate renewal toggles, because they are separate things. Order an annual plan and the first year of the name's registration is included; after that the registry's own renewal rate applies to the name while the hosting renews at the figure you ordered at.
The platform runs from London on 20i infrastructure, with cPanel on every tier. If your name's delegation already points elsewhere, leave it there and point a single A record at the account instead — nothing about hosting here obliges you to hand over the zone.
A glossary written by people who answer transfer tickets
Most hosting jargon becomes clear the moment somebody tells you which party controls the thing being described — the registry, the registrar, the reseller or the host. That is the sentence missing from nearly every definition on the web, so we wrote it into all of ours.
Order an annual plan and the first year of the name's registration is included.
- 100+ entries on names, zones, delegation and transfers
- Registry, registrar, reseller and host kept distinct throughout
- The verifying command written out wherever one exists
- Neighbouring records and registry rules linked together
Why Hosting & Domains
Standard on every plan
The name treated as the asset
Hosting is rented and replaceable; the registration is the thing with your name on it. Every entry here is written with that order of importance in mind.
Registry, registrar and host kept apart
Every entry names which party actually controls the thing described, because mistaking one for another is where most lost afternoons begin.
Delegation explained once, properly
What NS records do, where they are published and why a panel can hold a zone nobody ever reads — all in the one place.
Written from the transfer queue
These are the answers our own desk gives when a name stops resolving on a Friday, not a rewrite of somebody else's help centre.
Mail given its own warning
The MX record is the part of a hosting move people forget, so it gets said out loud rather than buried in a footnote.
The command that settles it
Where a claim can be checked from outside — dig, whois, a resolver you do not control — the check is written out in full.
Quick Start
Order placed to site online
- 1
Establish who is authoritative
Run dig NS on the name, or read the nameservers in your registrar's panel. Until you know which zone answers for the name, every DNS change you make is a guess.
- 2
Lower the cache before you move anything
Drop the TTL on the records you intend to change to five minutes, a day in advance. It costs nothing and it turns a bad afternoon into a two-minute rollback.
- 3
Change the site, then the mail
Point the A record first and confirm the site answers. Move the MX record afterwards, once mailboxes exist at the destination and not before.
Built In
Fitted to every plan
- The first year of the name included when the hosting plan is annual
- A zone editor in the panel, so the records stay yours to change
- Availability checked live before you pay for anything
- Spam and virus screening on every mailbox by default
- NVMe storage behind a LiteSpeed cache on every tier, the smallest included
- Softaculous in the panel for one-click installs, WordPress among them
- PHP versions chosen per site from the control panel
- DDoS filtering absorbed at the network edge
- ImunifyAV+ sweeping every site on the account for malware
- WebP image optimisation built in, at no extra charge
Frequently Asked
Questions we field again and again
If I cancel the hosting, do I lose the domain name?
No, provided the name was registered in your details and the registration is paid for. The website stops answering because the files have gone, but the name remains yours until its expiry date, and you can point it at another host, at a holding page or at nothing at all. The two cancellations are separate acts — ending one does not end the other, which is exactly why they are billed as separate lines.
Can I host with one company and keep the name at another?
That is the normal arrangement, and often the sensible one. Leave the name registered where it is, leave delegation with whoever holds the zone, and add a single A record pointing at the hosting account. You then have two suppliers who can each be replaced without disturbing the other, which is worth more than the small convenience of one invoice.
Can I keep DNS where it is and still host here?
Yes, and it is often the calmer option. Leave delegation with whoever holds it, then point an A record and the www record at the account. Authority stays wherever the NS records at the registry say it is, which also means the panel's own zone editor will have no effect until that changes.
Who stands behind Hosting & Domains?
Hosting & Domains is a trading name of Azaanex Inc., federally incorporated in Canada under company number 1766541-5, with terms governed by Ontario law. Running that check on any company before handing it a domain name is five minutes well spent.
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