Domain name is a website address that you type in the browser's address bar to open any website. It has the following three components:

1. Name - website name
2. Separator - period or dot is the separator used in domain names
3. Extension - generally it contains three letters like com. However, it can have different letters like co.uk.  

Example of the domain name is - webnots.com. Remember, the complete website URL you see in the browser's address bar may look https://www.webnots.com/. Here, HTTPS is the protocol, www is a subdomain and the / is added by the content management system. These components are not part of the domain name. You have to purchase a domain from registrars like GoDaddy for a specific period and continue the subscription continuously to keep under your ownership.

After purchasing a domain name, you need to purchase a storage space to keep all your content like files and database. This storage space is allocated in a web server called hosting server. Therefore, you need to have a domain name and a hosting server in order to create a website for public access.

You web hosting company will assigns an IP address to your domain name. This will help the DNS to resolve your domain name to the assigned IP address. You can change the hosting server to any company by keeping the domain name same. The popular web hosting companies include Bluehost, SiteGround, DreamHost and HostGator.

When browsing on the web. sometimes you may wonder who is the hosting provider for your favorite website. Here is a free tool to check the hosting company of a any given domain name. Just enter the domain name and hit submit button to see the IP address and the hosting provider name.

Once you have the IP address, you can directly enter the IP in the browser's address bar to access the website. In this way, you can make sure your website is wokring properly when there are issues in the DNS setup.

As you can see in the above screenshot, the hosting provider for this website is shown as Google Cloud. However, we host this webiste with SiteGround VPS on cloud. You may wonder why the tool is showing Google Cloud instead of SiteGround. The truth is that SiteGround uses Google Cloud service and hence the tool shows the source hosting server details.

Similarly, you will see Cloudflare or any other CDN company if the website uses CDN nameservers. You can also use the DNS lookup tool to find the server details.