Domains, hosting and email: who looks after what

Applies to: all Rhythm Digital clients

Most people think of their website as one thing. It's actually three or four separate services that happen to work together, often paid to different companies. Knowing which is which saves a lot of time when something goes wrong.

The four pieces

Your domain name is your address, like yourbusiness.com.au. You don't own it outright, you licence it, and it needs renewing. It's held with a domain registrar, which may be managed by us, by your IT provider, or by you directly.

Your hosting is where the website itself lives. For most of our clients that's Webflow, which we manage as part of your plan.

Your email is almost always a separate service, usually Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, sometimes still with an internet provider. Even though your email address ends in the same domain as your website, it's a different system entirely.

Your DNS is the switchboard that connects them. It's the set of instructions that says "web traffic for this domain goes to the website, email for this domain goes to the mail provider". It usually sits with whoever holds your domain.

A rough analogy: the domain is your street address, the hosting is the building, the email is your post office box, and DNS is the entry in the phone book that tells people where to find each.

Who manages your domain and DNS

This is the one that varies most between clients.

• We manage it for a lot of our clients, as part of the work we do for you

• Your IT provider manages it. For many of our clients that's Entourage Technology, who are part of the same business group as Rhythm Digital. We work together on domain and DNS changes, so you don't need to sit in the middle relaying messages.

• You hold it directly, often with a registrar you signed up with years ago

If you're not certain which applies to you, ask. It's worth knowing before you need to know.

Who to contact

Website is down, looks wrong, or needs changing → us, at support@rhythmdigital.com.au.

Domain needs renewing or details updating → us if we manage it, otherwise your IT provider or registrar. If you're not sure, ask us and we'll look it up and point you the right way.

Email not sending or receiving → your email provider or IT support. We can help work out where the problem sits, but we don't run your mailboxes and can't reset your password.

Enquiry forms from your website not arriving → us first. That's a website issue until proven otherwise, and it's usually a full inbox or a spam filter.

When in doubt, send it to us. If it's not ours we'll tell you where it belongs, and if it's something Entourage look after we can usually just pass it across.

Where it gets confusing

"My email is down, is the website broken?" Almost never. They're separate systems. The exception is if someone has changed the DNS, because that's the one place where website and email settings live side by side. If your email stopped working right after a website change, tell us immediately.

"I'm changing email providers, does that affect my website?" It shouldn't, but it involves DNS changes, and DNS is shared. Let us know before it happens so we can make sure nobody accidentally deletes the records pointing at your website. This one has caught out plenty of businesses.

"Why am I paying two or three companies?" Because they're genuinely different services. Your hosting is with us, your domain may be elsewhere, and your email is usually a third. It's normal.

If you're not sure what you've got

Email support@rhythmdigital.com.au and ask for a rundown of your setup. We'll tell you where your domain is registered, when it expires, where your site is hosted and where your email is pointed.

It's a useful thing to have written down somewhere, particularly if the person who originally set it all up has moved on.