Domain Name
Your domain name is your website's address — like yourbusiness.com. It's what people type to find you, and you rent it (usually yearly) rather than owning it outright.
Also known as: domain · web address · URL
In plain English
A domain name is the friendly address people use to reach your website — yourbusiness.com instead of a string of numbers. You register it through a domain company (a registrar) and pay a small yearly fee to keep it. Behind the scenes, your domain is connected through DNS to the hosting where your actual site lives.
Why it matters for your business
Your domain is part of your brand and, increasingly, an asset worth protecting. Two things matter most: keeping it renewed (an expired domain can take your whole site and email offline, and someone else can scoop it up), and keeping control of the account it lives in. Losing access to your domain is one of the more painful problems to untangle.
What to keep an eye on
Set your domain to auto-renew, make sure the registrar account is in your name and under your control, and keep the contact email current — so renewal notices actually reach you.
Common questions
- Do I own my domain name forever?
- Not exactly — you register it for a period (often a year at a time) and keep it as long as you renew. The biggest avoidable disaster is letting a domain expire by accident, so it's worth setting it to auto-renew.
- Can I move my domain to a different company?
- Yes. Your domain is yours to transfer between registrars, and moving it doesn't have to mean any downtime when it's done carefully. Just make sure you keep control of the account it's registered in.
Related terms
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