What is web hosting? A plain-English guide

Web hosting is the computer your website lives on. It's a server that stays switched on and connected to the internet around the clock, holding your site's files and database. When someone types your address, their browser asks that server for the pages and it sends them back. Without hosting, a website is just files sitting on somebody's laptop.

You rent that space from a hosting company, usually by the month or the year. Below is how it works, what you're really paying for and what to check before you sign up.

How hosting works

Three pieces have to line up for a website to load.

• Your domain is the address, like yourbusiness.com.au. You register it and renew it.
• DNS is the directory that tells the internet which server that address points to.
• Hosting is the server at the end of that pointer, holding the site and handing it out.

Think of the domain as your street address and the hosting as the building. You can keep the same address and move into a different building. That's what switching hosts is: the files get copied to a new server, then the domain is pointed at it. Done properly, customers never notice.

Domain, hosting and email are three different things

This trips up a lot of business owners, mostly because one company often sells all three. They're separate services and you can buy each from somewhere different.

The domain is registered in your name through a registrar. The hosting runs the website. Email can run on the same server as your site, but it's usually better on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Mailboxes on a web server tend to fill up and land in spam folders. And if the website goes down, your email goes with it.

Before you change anything, find out where each of the three lives. Moving a website without knowing where your email is hosted is the classic way to stop receiving it for a day.

The main types of hosting

Shared hosting

Your site sits on a server alongside many others, all sharing its resources. It's the cheapest kind and perfectly fine for a small, quiet site. You get a control panel and a login. Updates, backups and fixing things are generally up to you.

Cloud and VPS hosting

You get a slice of a server (or a group of them) with resources set aside for you. It's more reliable under load and more expensive. Most of it is aimed at developers, so expect to manage it yourself unless the plan says otherwise.

Managed hosting

The host looks after the site as well as the server: software updates, backups, security patches and someone to email when something breaks. You pay more each month and do less. For a business owner who doesn't want to think about WordPress updates, it's usually the sensible trade.

Hosting inside a website builder

Wix, Squarespace and similar tools include hosting in the plan. It's simple. The catch is you can't take the site to another host, so read our comparison of website builders and web designers before committing.

What to check before you pay

Backups

Ask three things. How often are backups taken? How long are they kept? Who restores one when you need it? "Backups included" means very little if they're weekly, kept for a few days and you have to restore them yourself at 11pm.

The SSL certificate

SSL is what puts the padlock in the browser bar and the "s" in https. Without it, browsers warn visitors that your site isn't secure. Most hosts include a free certificate now. Check it renews by itself.

Where the server is

A server in Australia keeps your data onshore, which matters if you hold customer details. It's also physically closer to Australian visitors, so pages have less distance to travel. Plenty of cheap plans are hosted overseas without saying so up front.

The renewal price

Cheap hosting is often priced for the first year only. VentraIP's entry business plan, for example, showed $5.50 a month on the first invoice for up to a year, against a regular price of $11.00 a month, when we checked on 2 October 2026. That's a fair, clearly labelled discount. Just budget for the second number, not the first. Our guide to what web hosting costs in Australia compares more hosts side by side.

Who's on the other end

Find out how you get help and how quickly. Email, phone, chat or a ticket queue all work. What matters is whether a person who can fix things answers within a business day.

Whose name is on it

The control panel login should be in your name, not only your web designer's. If you part ways, you don't want to be negotiating for access to your own website.

When cheap hosting is fine

Honestly, often. A five-page site for a trade or a clinic that rarely changes will run happily on a basic shared plan, as long as somebody keeps WordPress and its plugins updated. Where cheap hosting goes wrong is when nobody does that. Out-of-date plugins are one of the usual ways attackers get in. Cleaning up a hacked site can easily cost more than years of the difference in hosting fees.

Managed hosting earns its keep when the site takes bookings or orders, when you've paid good money for the build or when you simply don't want to be the person checking for updates.

How our hosting works

We run managed hosting on Google Cloud in Sydney, so your files and database stay in Australia. Every plan gets a free SSL certificate that renews itself. A backup is taken every 24 hours and kept for 30 days. Ask and we restore one. Plans start at $25 a month inc GST. Pay yearly and you get two months free. The hosting plans page lists every inclusion line by line. Running WordPress? Managed WordPress hosting covers staging and WooCommerce.

Already hosted somewhere and not sure it's doing its job? The free website check tests your site's speed, certificate and security headers in a few minutes.

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