Let’s talk about two foundational technologies needed to power your website: DNS and Hosting Providers. Without them, no website can exist, and yet, many brand owners can’t explain the difference between the two. Let’s clear that up right now.

OK, so you want to go to a website. You know the name of the site, maybe something like punchteam.com. Good choice. The problem is, the servers that host that beautiful site don’t speak your slow, inefficient earth language.

And that means you need a translator.

Enter The Domain Name System. This system exists to translate your plodding language into efficient bits that computers and servers can understand. Cloudflare calls the DNS “The phonebook of the Internet” . You start with a name (punchteam.com) and the DNS looks up its actual number location within the internet. If you were driving to a physical location, this would be the address.

And if you were driving to a physical location, that address would lead you to your desired storefront. Excellent! Great success! But hold on a second. Do you see how that storefront is housed in a bigger larger building complex, maybe a shopping plaza?

That’s what a Hosting Provider is. It is the actual infrastructure that makes accessing your site possible. It’s where you images, code, text all live. And just like entering a high-end retail store is a much better experience than walking into a crumbling convenience store, the quality of your hosting provider determines the quality of your users’ experience.

In fact, MDN points out a good hosting provider is a foundational part of building a successful website. Better hosting providers mean faster load speed, more uptime, and better security, all of which let you get the most out of your site. After all, what good is a beautiful website if it takes forever to load and spends half its time throwing out 404s?

So how important are DNS and Hosting Providers to your business?  Deloitte and Google teamed up to answer that very question and they found that a 0.1 second speed improvement led to an 8.4% increase in conversion and a 9.2% increase in average order value.

Because the DNS and the Hosting Provider are so important to your website, you’ll stumble into agencies that use proprietary servers to host your site and lock you into their infrastructure. They’ll build your site around their technology so your website can’t exist without them.

But you won’t find those shenanigans around here. When we build your website, we build it, from day one, with the handoff in mind. What’s the handoff? That’s the day we toss you the keys.

We don’t believe in agency-owned servers or perpetual lock-ins. We build websites on flexible, gold-standard technology like WordPress, Webflow, and HubSpot. We believe it’s your brand and your infrastructure. Want to learn more about the stack we use or the philosophy we follow? Check out our whole design and development process.

At the end of the day, the formula is simple: when you control your own infrastructure, you control the user experience. And when your customers can get to your website quickly (DNS) and interact with it smoothly (Hosting Provider), your business wins.

Cloudflare: https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/dns/what-is-dns/

MDN: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn_web_development/Howto/Web_mechanics/What_is_a_web_server

Deloitte & Google: https://www.deloitte.com/ie/en/services/consulting/research/milliseconds-make-millions.html