Domain and hosting for a business website: what should you own?

Owners often treat the domain and hosting as technical details the developer “handles”. Then the developer disappears, the renewal lapses, and the website and company email go down together. This note explains the three pieces in plain language and what you should hold in your own hands.

Three different things

• Domain: the address, like yourcompany.com. You rent it yearly from a registrar.
• Hosting: where the website files live and are served from.
• Business email: often a separate service that uses the same domain.

They can be bought from the same company or from three. What matters is that you know where each one is and can log in.

The rule: the domain is yours

Register the domain in your company's name, with an email address your company controls. Give the developer access if they need it — do not let the domain live inside their personal account. The same goes for the hosting account when you pay for it.

Turn on auto-renew and keep a working card on file. A lapsed domain takes the website and email offline, and a popular name can be picked up by someone else.

.com or a country domain?

A .com is simple and familiar across Egypt and the GCC. Country domains such as .com.eg or .sa can signal a local business, but each has its own registration rules and paperwork. Check those rules before assuming a name is available to you. Whichever you choose, the ownership rule above does not change.

What to ask about hosting

• Does the site run on HTTPS by default?
• Are there backups, and who can restore them?
• Who gets the alert, and who fixes it, when the site is down?
• Is the site fast for visitors on mobile data? Speed is part of the product.

Handover checklist

When a site launches, you should receive — or already have:

1. The registrar login where the domain is registered.
2. Access to DNS settings.
3. The hosting account login, if you pay for hosting.
4. Admin logins for anything you are meant to edit yourself.
5. A written note of who maintains the site and how to reach them.

If a company cannot tell you where your domain is registered, ask before you pay for anything else. This is one of the questions in how to choose a website company in Egypt, and we agree it inside the scope on every website we build.