The short answer
Your domain is your address (yourbusiness.co.za). Hosting is where your website lives and runs. Business email is the mailboxes on that address (you@yourbusiness.co.za). They are three separate services, often from different companies, and each one renews on its own. The domain matters most: make sure it is registered in your name.
Three things, one house
Most people talk about “the website” as one thing. It is really three, and when something breaks it helps to know which one.
- Domain
- Your address: yourbusiness.co.za. It is the name people type, and the name after the @ in your email. You rent it a year at a time.
- Hosting
- Where your website lives and runs: a computer that is switched on all day, every day, and sends your pages to every visitor.
- Business email
- Mailboxes on your domain, like you@yourbusiness.co.za. It uses the domain, but it is a separate service from the website.
Think of it as a house. The domain is the street address. Hosting is the plot and the building. Email is the postbox at the gate. And something has to tell the post office and your visitors which building and which postbox belong to that address. That is DNS: a short list of settings on your domain that points to where your website and your email live.
Tap a part of the house
Domain: the street address
- What it is
- The name people type to find you. It points to your website and your email, but holds neither.
- Who you pay
- A domain registrar (a company allowed to sell .co.za names), or whoever registered it for you.
- How often
- Every year. Some registrars let you pay for a few years at once.
- If it lapses
- After a few days your website and email both stop working. Leave it longer and anyone can register the name.
What each costs and how renewals work
- Domain
- A .co.za usually costs around R100 a year, depending on the registrar. You pay once a year, and the price goes up a little most years.
- Hosting
- Usually a monthly fee. Cheap hosting gets your site online. Better hosting adds backups, security and someone who answers when it breaks.
- Business email
- Usually charged per mailbox, per month, or bundled with hosting. Check how many mailboxes you get and how much space each one has.
The domain is the one that catches people out. It renews once a year, the invoice goes to whoever registered it, and it is easy to miss. For .co.za names, the registry gives a short grace period after the expiry date. After that the domain is suspended and your website and email stop working at the same time. Renew late and you usually pay an extra redemption fee. Leave it long enough and the name is deleted and anyone can register it.
Hosting and email lapse more quietly. Stop paying for hosting and the website goes offline, but email hosted elsewhere keeps working. Stop paying for email and messages bounce, but the website stays up.
With us, every website comes with a monthly plan. Managed Hosting (R249/month) includes hosting, business email for up to 5 mailboxes, and domain and dns management. Managed Care (R749/month) raises that to 10 mailboxes and adds monthly updates and 1 hour of changes per month. The full list is on the pricing page.
Who owns your domain?
The person or business named as the registrant owns the domain. Not the person who paid, not the person who built the site. The registrant decides where the domain points, who manages it, and whether it moves to another company.
It is common for a web designer or an IT friend to register the domain in their own name to save time. Usually nothing goes wrong. But if you fall out, they close shop or they simply stop answering, your address, your website and your email are all tied to someone else. Your customers know your domain. Getting it back can be slow and awkward.
You can't buy a .co.za straight from the registry. You buy it through a registrar, a company accredited by the registry to sell and renew .co.za names. Hosting companies and web designers are often registrars, or work through one. That is fine, as long as the registrant is you.
Check yours in two minutes
- Look up your domain on the ZARC WHOIS page (ZARC runs the .co.za registry). Check who the registrant is: it should be you or your business, not your web designer.
- In the same lookup, note the registrar (the company that sells and renews it) and the expiry date. Put the date in your calendar a month early.
- Find the last renewal invoice for the domain. Whoever sends it is the company you pay. If you can’t find one, someone else is paying, and you need to know who.
- Check where your email lives. If you sign in through Google or Microsoft, that is your email host. If you use a webmail page from your hosting company, your email and website share a host.
- Write all of this down in one place, with the logins, and keep it somewhere you and one other person can find.
You can run the lookup on the ZARC WHOIS page. Some personal details may be hidden for privacy. If the registrant isn't shown, ask your registrar or whoever registered the domain to confirm it in writing.
My take
I don't mind who hosts your website or your email. I do mind who owns your domain. It is the one piece you can't replace without losing your address, so register it in your business's name and keep the login yourself. Everything else can be moved.
Kris, founder of TechOnEdge
Quick questions
Can I move my website without losing my email?
Yes. The website and the email are separate, so moving one should not touch the other. The person doing the move must check your email settings on the domain before and after, because one wrong setting can stop email arriving.
My web designer registered my domain. Is it mine?
Only if you are named as the registrant. If the designer is, ask them in writing to change the registrant to you or your business. It is a normal request, and doing it while you are on good terms is much easier than doing it later.
Do I really need business email if Gmail works?
It is not required. But an address on your own domain looks more established, and it stays with the business when staff leave. If the domain is yours, the email address is too.