Understanding Domain Names, DNS, and Web Hosting

July 31, 2026

Introduction

At my day job, I'm often asked questions like, "What's the difference between my domain name and DNS?" or "How do I know where my website is hosted?" If you've ever wondered the same thing, continue reading.

In this brief blog post, I'll walk you through the basics of domain names, DNS, and web hosting. My goal is to give you a better understanding of what each one does and, more importantly, how they all work together to get a website from a server to your browser.

Domain Names

What is a Domain Name

A domain name is a human-readable name used to identify a specific location or namespace on the internet, such as google.com or twinlakestech.com. Thanks to domain names, we(the humans) don't need to remember an IP address such as 172.253.115.101.

This means a domain name is NOT:

• your website
• your email
• your hosting
• your DNS

It is simply a name.

So the next question is usually, where can I purchase a domain name? That's where the registrar enters the party. A registar like GoDaddy or Network Solutions, is a company you purchase or renew your domain through. When you register a domain name, you gain control over that domain for the duration of the registration.

Web Hosting

Ok, so I have a domain name purchased, but where does my website actually live?

Hosting is simply a computer (often called a server) connected to the internet that stores your website files. A hosting provider is a company that provides the server or infrastructure where your website can be stored and served to visitors. Depending on the type of hosting you purchase, the provider may handle some or all of the server configuration for you. A few examples of common hosting providers are Amazon AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, and Bluehost.

Remember: You can move your website to another hosting provider without changing your domain. That's because hosting and domains are separate!

DNS

DNS stands for Domain Name System.

It is the system used to associate human-readable domain names with information such as IP addresses and mail servers.

For example, instead of remembering 172.66.147.243, we remember example.com.

There are several different types of records that can be configured for a domain in DNS. I'll briefly mention the most common below, but this post is meant merely to be an introduction to the general terms.

A Record

The purpose of the A record is to point the domain name to an IPv4 address. Ex. example.com > 192.0.2.10

AAAA Record

The AAAA Record points the domain name to an IPv6 address. Ex. example.com > 2001:db8::10

CNAME

A CNAME, or Canonical Name, is used to create an alias for another domain name. For example, www.example.com could have a CNAME pointing to example.com. DNS can then look up the A or AAAA record for example.com to determine the IP address.

MX Record

The MX record is used for a mail server, it tells mail servers where mail for a domain should be delivered. Without an MX record, email doesnt know where to deliver messages.

You send an email to bob@example.com > DNS looks up the MX record for example.com > finds mail.example.com in the records > mail server receives the message.

MX records don't tell your email application where to connect to retrieve mail.

They're specifically about mail delivery to the domain.

TXT Record

The purpose of the TXT record is to store text information. The most common uses for this record are domain verification, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC(more on this in a later article).

NS Record

The NS record or Name Server record tells the internet who is responsible for answering DNS questions for your domain. For example, if you purchased your domain name from GoDaddy but wanted more DNS security provided by Cloudflare DNS, the NS record stored in your GoDaddy account would be the name of the Cloudflare nameserver, thus allowing Cloudflare to answer all DNS quieries from the internet about your domain. Then, Cloudflare would store the A record for your domain. (This would be one of the possible quieries in the example.)

If you buy example.com from GoDaddy and change the nameservers to Cloudflare, you're essentially saying:

"GoDaddy is my registrar, but Cloudflare is now authoritative for my DNS."

How Everything Works Together

Identifiying DNS Records

In this final section, I want to cover a few resources for identifying DNS records. As I'm often asked "How do I find where my website is hosted?" or "I don't remember who I purchased my domain name through, where do I look to find out?".

I imagine the list is endless for website options that will provide DNS records and other information for a domain name, the following are a few I use often (I am not affiliated with any of the sites below)

DNSChecker.org is a convenient web-based collection of DNS and network troubleshooting tools. It can be useful for quickly checking DNS records and comparing DNS responses from different locations. For important troubleshooting or security investigations, however, I recommend verifying its results independently with tools such as dig or directly querying authoritative DNS servers.

Another useful tool for looking up information about a domain is GoDaddy's WHOIS lookup.The webiste address is https://www.godaddy.com/whois. GoDaddy is a well-established domain registrar and hosting provider, and their WHOIS tool allows you to look up information about a domain, such as its registrar, registration and expiration dates, and nameservers. Depending on the domain and the privacy settings in place, some of the registrant's information may also be available. This can be a useful way to get a little more information about a domain when trying to determine who manages it and where it is registered.

Finally, the last tool on this short list, I like to use when looking up information about a domain is ICANN's Lookup tool at https://lookup.icann.org/en. ICANN, or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is responsible for coordinating the global domain name system, so this is a good place to go when you want to look up registration information directly. I especially like this site because it is straightforward and doesn't have ads blinking in your face while you're trying to find the information you're looking for. Like the other tools mentioned above, the information available can vary depending on the domain and whether privacy protections are enabled, but it is a useful resource when researching a domain name.