In plain English
If your domain is the address, hosting is the building at that address: the place your website actually lives. A good building is secure, well kept and has room for visitors; a cheap one leaks.
Used in a sentence
“Hosting is included in the monthly plan: backups, security updates and someone watching it, so you never have to think about it.”
“Our site went down every time we ran a promotion, because the hosting couldn't handle the traffic.”
In detail
Hosting ranges from shared plans, where your site shares a server with many others, to managed platforms that spread pages across the world so they load close to each visitor. The difference shows in how quickly pages load, how often the site goes down and how well it holds up when a lot of people arrive at once.
Good hosting also includes the unglamorous parts: automatic backups, security patches, an SSL certificate that renews itself, and monitoring that notices problems before customers do. When hosting is part of a maintenance plan, those jobs are handled for you.
Why it matters for your business
Hosting decides whether your site is there when customers look, and how quickly it loads when they do.
- Uptime when customers are looking
- Backups if something goes wrong
- Security kept up to date
Easy to mix up
Hosting isn't the same as your domain. You can move hosting without changing your address, and many problems blamed on "the website" are really the hosting underneath it.
Related terms
Domain name, SSL certificate and Core Web Vitals. Or browse the whole glossary.
