Hosting
Every website you have ever opened lives on a computer that stays switched on. Web hosting is renting space on one of those computers so your pages, images and emails are available to anyone, anywhere, at any hour.
Published 14 January 2026 8 min read
Web hosting is a service that stores your website files on a server — a computer built to stay online — and delivers them to visitors when they type your address. Your web host looks after the machine, the network, the security patches and the backups, so you only look after your website.
Without hosting, a website is a folder on your laptop that nobody else can open. With hosting, it is a public address that works while you sleep.
Four things happen in under a second, every time.
People mix these up constantly, and it costs them money. A domain is the address. Hosting is the space the site occupies. The website is what you build and put in that space.
You need the address and the space. You can build the website yourself, use WordPress, or use a website builder that does the design for you.
Register your domain and start on a plan that includes free SSL, daily backups and 24-hour human support.
The names are marketing labels for genuinely different setups. Start at the top and move down only when you have a reason to.
This is the whole process, in order.
Ignore the biggest numbers. Look for the renewal price printed next to the first-year price, free SSL, automatic daily backups you can restore yourself, email included or available, and support staffed by people who answer at the hour you work.
Our engineers answer setup and migration questions in plain language, 24 hours a day.
