Registering a domain gives you the name — and only the name. That is what lies behind almost every question that reaches us in the days after a registration, and it is always the same two: why does my website not open? and why is my e-mail not working? One answer serves both, and it is not bad news: the domain is one thing, what you put inside it is another.
What the domain already gives you
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The name, reserved in your name. While the registration is active and paid, nobody else in the world can register yourcompany.com .
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The right to decide where it points. The domain can point at our servers, at another provider, or at nowhere at all. The holder decides.
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Renewal in your hands. While it is yours, renewing before it expires is up to you — only after it expires and the recovery period runs out does the name go back on the market.
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What the registration does not include
| What you want |
What you need besides the domain |
| A website that opens |
A hosting plan: it stores the page files and delivers them to anyone who types your address into a browser. |
| E-mail on your domain |
A Professional E-mail plan or a hosting plan — that is where mailboxes live. See the Professional E-mail plan . |
| The padlock (https) |
An SSL certificate. Hosting plans include one that renews itself; a paid certificate is for specific cases, such as organisation validation. |
| The domain answering |
A DNS zone on a nameserver that answers for it. Without that the domain exists in the registry but resolves to nothing. See what nameservers are . |
Why these are separate things
Think of the domain as the address and the hosting as the house. You can buy the address and never build anything; you can move house without changing address; and you can have the house in one place and the letterbox in another — which is exactly what happens when the website is with one provider and the e-mail with another.
It is also why the prices are separate. Someone registering today the name of a brand that only launches next year pays for the name alone, not for hosting that would sit empty for a year. The full explanation is in domain vs web hosting: what is the difference .
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It is not a fault. A freshly registered domain that opens nothing in the browser is behaving exactly as it should. It only starts showing something once there is hosting and the DNS points at it.
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The shortest route to getting it all working
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Decide what you want first. Website, e-mail, or both. It does not have to be everything at once — e-mail without a website is a legitimate and very common choice for companies that do not have a page yet.
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Pick the plan by the size of the project and order it in My MozOut. If you are not sure which, see the full plan comparison or ask us.
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Point the domain at wherever the service ends up. If the domain was registered with us, we handle that; if it is at another registrar, the nameserver change is made on their side.
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An SSL certificate before the rest will not work. A certificate can only be issued once the domain resolves, because validation is done by querying the domain itself. Bought before there is hosting and DNS, it sits waiting and cannot be installed. First the domain answering, then the certificate — see how to activate and install a paid SSL certificate .
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You already have the name. Tell us what you want to put on it and we will point you the shortest way.
Open a support ticket
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