Domain and hosting: what you need to know

The domain is the address, the hosting is the plot of land. Without both there is no website, and both are paid separately from building it. Here is what you need to know.

The domain

The domain is what people type into the browser — yourcompany.cz. It is rented by the year, not bought forever.

How to choose one

• Short and pronounceable. The test: dictate it over the phone. If you have to spell it out, it is the wrong one.
• No hyphens or numbers if you can avoid them. joinery-novak-prague.cz looks cheap and is hard to pass on.
• No accented characters. Technically possible, practically a source of trouble.
• Company name or trade? The name is better long term — the trade can change. A keyword in the domain adds almost nothing in search these days, so do not play that game for SEO.

Which extension

Doing business in Czechia for Czech customers? .cz, no debate. Czechs trust it more and it helps Google understand which market you are aiming at. Take .com only if you have ambitions outside the country. Newer endings such as .online or .shop are cheap but look less trustworthy to ordinary customers.

You can check whether your domain is free at any registrar. If it is taken, do not buy it from a reseller for tens of thousands — find another one.

What it costs

Roughly CZK 200 – 400 a year for a .cz. The first year is often on offer for a crown — check the renewal price, that is where it evens out.

The trap this article exists for

The domain must be registered to you — your name, your business ID, your e-mail. Not to the website supplier, not to their company, not to their e-mail.

When it is not and you part ways badly, the supplier is holding your address. They can ask for money to transfer it, they can let it lapse, or they can keep it running and leave you starting from zero. I see it regularly and it resolves badly, because formally they are the owner.

What to do: register the domain yourself, before you even start dealing with the website. It takes ten minutes and costs two hundred crowns. Then you simply give the supplier access to the settings, or tell them where to point the site. If the supplier registers the domain, ask in writing that you are the owner, and verify it after launch in the WHOIS registry.

Hosting

Hosting is where the website's files physically sit. If the domain is the address, the hosting is the house.

Types and prices

For an ordinary brochure site, static hosting is faster, safer and cheaper than shared hosting. There is no database to attack and the files are served from locations around the world. That is why I build sites this way and why my clients pay nothing for hosting.

What to watch out for

• The SSL certificate (HTTPS) must be free. Let's Encrypt has been the standard for years. If someone bills you hundreds a year for it, something is off.
• Backups. Ask how often they run and how long they are kept.
• Where it runs. For Czech visitors, a server in Europe is noticeably faster than one in America.
• Years prepaid up front look like a bargain but lock you in with one provider. Go monthly for the first year.

E-mail on your own domain

Once you have a domain, use name@yourcompany.cz instead of a free mailbox. It reads incomparably more professionally to clients and it is a matter of configuration. Most hosting packages include e-mail; where they do not, Google Workspace or Zoho solves it for a few crowns a month.

In short

• Register the domain yourself and in your own name, before you pick a supplier.
• Choose .cz, short, no hyphens.
• Budget: CZK 200 – 400 a year for the domain; hosting can easily be zero depending on the type of site.
• HTTPS is free. Always.