Hosting and domain explained
Does my website need hosting? Can I purchase it from somewhere else? What if I already have a domain? Do I need one?
These are all GREAT questions and I am here to answer them! I’m going to use an analogy that everyone will understand to try and explain these:
A domain is like the address of your home and hosting is the rent you pay to live there.
Let’s break this down!
Domain
What it is:
Your domain, also referred to as your URL or website address, is what people type into their search bar to go to your website. For instance to come to this website, you went to www.23and9creative.com. This is called a custom domain name because I specifically chose that name and paid to own it. Domains can have “www” or not (when they don’t it’s called a naked domain) and they can also be .com, .org, .co - whatever you choose it to be! Of course .com is the most common (and best for SEO purposes).
When you create a website with Squarespace, Wix, Wordpress, etc. you usually also will have an internal or built in domain name associated with the website builder you use. For instance, mine is twenty3and9creative.squarespace.com. You can change this internal domain whenever you want in your website with Squarespace by going to SETTINGS > DOMAIN and simply changing it.
Where to get one:
There are many places you can buy a custom domain! You can buy one from a third party such as GoDaddy or you can also purchase one from Squarespace when you sign up for your hosting. It’s usually in the ballpark of $9 - $20 a year to purchase a custom domain. Not bad!
How to add a custom domain to your website:
You can purchase a domain well before you create or purchase hosting for your website. It doesn’t matter where your domain is purchased from, you will be able to connect it to your Squarespace website. You cannot connect a custom domain to your website though until you’ve purchased hosting.
After you’ve purchased hosting (see below for more on this!) you have 3 options:
Purchase a new custom domain. If you don’t have one yet this may be a good option. If you plan on purchase a year of hosting up front, you will get your custom domain free for a year and then $20/year after that.
Connect a domain you own. This means if you have purchased through GoDaddy or somewhere else you are simply just going to sign into that provider and “point” the domain to go to your website. I do have to say GoDaddy is the easiest third party to connect your domain from. If you need help connecting a domain from another third party, you can check out this article from Squarespace with all documentation on how to connect different providers.
Transfer a domain you own. This can be where confusion happens! Transferring a domain means that if you purchased it from a third part you are going to transfer the ownership of your domain to Squarespace. The reason you would want to transfer your domain to Squarespace is if you have a domain provider that is really confusing or really hard to work with and you want to be able to control everything about your domain in Squarespace. If you choose to do this here are the steps to transfer your domain to Squarespace.
Hosting
WHAT IT IS:
For any website to be “live” on the internet you must pay for it to be there - this is called hosting. For any Squarespace website you MUST purchase the hosting through Squarespace for a particular website. You cannot transfer hosting from one website to another within your Squarepace account.
Since you cannot transfer hosting from one Squarespace website to another, you do NOT want to purchase hosting first if you are starting a new website and thinking about buying a website template. All of my 7.1 website templates are transferred as NEW websites, so if you are already paying for hosting on another site you will have to go through the process of trying to get Squarespace to reimburse you retroactively and that is just no fun!
Either way, you MUST purchase hosting before you can connect your domain name and “launch” your website or make it “live”.
How much is it?
When you first start a new website with Squarespace you have a free 14 days to work on your website before you need to purchase hosting to continue using it. If you finish working on your website before those 14 days are up and are ready to launch it, you will need to pay for the hosting first in order to launch.
PS - if you purchase a Squarespace website template from me, that 14 days turns into 6 months! So you don’t have to feel rushed getting your new site perfect before launch day.
There are several different “tiers” of hosting that Squarespace offers you can see here.
The main difference between personal and business is having access to add custom css, having more than two contributors and commerce. The biggest differences between the other three are all commerce related. Their chart is pretty helpful in figuring out exactly what you need!
If you purchase a full year of hosting up front rather than pay month to month, you will save 13% - 30% annually PLUS get a free domain name for a year through Squarespace. If you already have your domain name, don’t worry about this part. But could be a great deal if you need one still!
I am also super excited that I get to offer everyone who purchases a website template from me as a new site 20% off their first year of hosting!
How do I purchase hosting?
When you’re logged into your website in the gray panel on the left hand side you will go to SETTINGS > BILLING & ACCOUNT and it will walk you through the steps to choose your hosting plan and purchase! You can choose for your hosting to auto renew or not when you purchase.
I hope this explains a bit more about the two and provides some clarity to an always confusing topic!
What do you think? Drop your questions below!
