A domain name is the actual name of a website, and every single website has a domain name. To obtain one, you need to purchase it through a domain registrar. Domains can cost anywhere from a few dollars a year to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, based on the contract and popularity of the domain. Every domain name is actually pointing to an IP (Internet Protocol) address, which is a series of numbers. Because most people can’t remember 10 digits in perfect order, domain names serve as easily-remembered alias for visitors. Probably the best known domain name is google.com, and Google’s IP address is 173.194.79.99… which is easier for you to remember?

Bandwidth is the amount of data that is accessed while viewing a website. Every time a user views a website, data is transferred, and the measurement of that transfer is bandwidth. In general, images, audio files and video files are higher in bandwidth than text. That means that if you have a more burdensome website in terms of bandwidth – if you have lots of video or streaming audio, for example – you have a higher bandwidth requirement than someone with a simple text-only website, or someone with only a few low-resolution images. Some web hosts offer unlimited bandwidth, and some place a cap on it.

Disk space refers to the total space available for a user to store files on at any time. Files may be any type - HTML, images, videos – and at any single given time, the total file size may not exceed the disk space. How much disk space you need is dependent on what type of media and interactions you’ll be hosting through your site. Your email account’s storage is also counted in disk space, so if you have large files that will sit in the account, that will boost your disk space needs. Remember that although you might not need much space now, you want wiggle room to expand and grow in the future, without switching hosts.