What is a domain name and how do I get one?

Short answer: A domain name is the address people type to reach your website, like yourbusiness.co.uk. You rent it from a registrar for a small yearly fee, and it points visitors to wherever your site is hosted. Nobody sells it to you forever — you keep it by renewing each year.

What a domain name actually is

Every website lives on a computer somewhere, and that computer has a long string of numbers for an address. A domain name is the friendly version of that address so people don't have to remember the numbers. When someone types yourbusiness.co.uk, the internet quietly translates it into the right location and loads your site.

The domain is separate from the website itself and from the hosting that stores it. Think of it like the sign over your shop — the sign tells people where to go, but the shop and its stock are a different thing. That means you can change your website, your designer, or your host without changing your address, which matters because your domain is what customers, Google, and your business cards all point at.

How to get one

You buy a domain through a registrar — a company that manages the register of names. In the UK that's outfits like GoDaddy, Namecheap, IONOS, or 123 Reg. You search for the name you want, and if it's free, you pay the yearly fee and it's yours to use.

Picking the name is the part worth slowing down on:

• Keep it short and easy to say. If you have to spell it out every time you tell someone, it's too fiddly.
• Match your business name where you can, so people can guess it.
• Avoid hyphens and clever spellings. yourbusiness.co.uk beats your-biz-online.co.uk every time.
• Check social handles too, so your name is consistent everywhere.

For most UK businesses a .co.uk is the sensible choice. It's recognised, usually cheaper, and signals you're a local outfit. Grab the .com as well if it's available and cheap — it stops a competitor taking it.

Domain, hosting and website — how they fit together

These three get muddled constantly, so here's the plain version. The domain is the address. The hosting is the space that stores your site's files. The website is the thing people see. You need all three, but they can come from different places.

When we build a site, we point your domain at the hosting so everything connects. If you already own a domain, we use it. If you don't, we help you register the right one. Our hosting is free, forever, and the domain fee is separate and paid to the registrar — usually under a tenner a year. There's no subscription trap here; you own the site outright and the domain stays in your name. If you want the full picture on running costs, our guide on what web hosting is and the one on hidden website costs both help.

Keeping control of it

One rule matters above all: the domain should be registered in your name and your email, not your designer's. It's your business asset. If a designer registers it for you, make sure the account and login are handed to you, so you're never locked out. This is the same principle behind who owns your website — you should hold the keys.

Set the renewal to auto-renew so it can't lapse by accident. A lapsed domain can be snapped up by anyone, and buying it back can get expensive or impossible. It's a quiet annual cost that's easy to forget, so put it somewhere you'll see it.

Sorting your domain is one of the first, simplest steps in getting online, and it costs very little. If you're ready to build the site that sits behind it, get a clear price or see what's included in our packages.

Want help choosing and setting up your domain? Get a clear price and we'll sort the whole thing.