The Reference
HOSTING GLOSSARY
36 plain-English definitions of the web-hosting and infrastructure terms that actually decide whether your site is fast, reliable and affordable. Each entry has an answer-first definition for the impatient, a longer "how it works" for the curious, a "why it matters" for the decision-makers, and direct links to the HostList rankings and comparison pages where that term shows up in practice. Written for buyers and builders, not for search-engine bots: HostList earns nothing from any service mentioned.
Hosting models
Web Hosting
The service that stores your website files on an always-on server and serves them to visitors over the internet.
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Shared Hosting
The cheapest hosting model, where many sites share one physical server's resources.
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VPS
A virtual server with dedicated CPU, RAM and storage carved from a single physical machine.
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Dedicated Server
A whole physical server rented to one customer, with full hardware and OS control.
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Cloud Hosting
Hosting on distributed infrastructure with on-demand scaling and pay-as-you-go billing.
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Managed Hosting
Hosting where the provider handles the operating system, updates, security and backups for you.
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Reseller Hosting
A hosting plan you split into multiple sub-accounts to resell to your own clients.
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Colocation
Renting rack space, power and network in a data centre for your own server hardware.
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Jamstack
A web architecture: pre-built static sites served from a CDN, with serverless functions for the dynamic bits.
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Email Hosting
A service that runs mailboxes on your own domain ([email protected]), separate from your website hosting.
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SSD Hosting
Hosting that stores your data on solid-state drives (SSD/NVMe) instead of spinning disks, for much faster reads.
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Green Hosting
Web hosting powered by renewable energy or offset by carbon credits, cutting the footprint of running your site.
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Network & DNS
Domain Name
The human-readable address people type to reach your site, like example.com, mapped to a server by DNS.
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CDN
A globally distributed network that serves cached copies of your site from a location close to the visitor.
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DNS
The internet's address book that translates domain names into the IP addresses computers use.
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A Record
A DNS record that maps a domain (or subdomain) to a specific IPv4 address.
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CNAME
A DNS record that points one hostname to another hostname (an alias), instead of an IP address.
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MX Record
A DNS record that says which mail server is responsible for receiving email for a domain.
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IP Address
The numerical address (IPv4 or IPv6) that identifies a server or device on the internet.
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WHOIS
A public lookup that returns ownership and registration details for a domain name.
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Performance & SEO
TTFB
Time To First Byte: how long the browser waits between requesting a page and the first byte arriving.
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Core Web Vitals
Google's three user-experience metrics (LCP, INP, CLS) that feed directly into search rankings.
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Bandwidth
The amount of data your hosting plan can transfer per month, often the biggest cost driver at scale.
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Edge Function
Server code that runs at a CDN edge location near the visitor, instead of at a single origin.
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Structured Data
Machine-readable markup (usually JSON-LD) that describes a page so search and AI engines can understand it.
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Security
SSL (and TLS)
Encryption between browser and server that powers HTTPS and the padlock in the URL bar.
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HTTPS
The encrypted version of HTTP, signalled by the padlock and required for modern web features.
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DDoS Attack
A flood of malicious traffic from many sources aimed at knocking a site or service offline.
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WAF
Web Application Firewall: filters malicious requests (SQL injection, XSS, bot abuse) before they hit your app.
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Backup
A copy of your site's files and database, kept somewhere else, so you can restore after an incident.
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Uptime
The percentage of time a site or service is reachable; 99.9% is the common production minimum.
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Servers & panels
NGINX
A high-performance open-source web server widely used as a reverse proxy, load balancer and HTTP cache.
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Apache
The long-running open-source web server that defined HTTP for decades and still powers shared hosting.
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cPanel
The most widely used hosting control panel, with file manager, email, databases, SSL and WordPress installs.
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Plesk
A hosting control panel that runs on Linux and Windows, the main commercial rival to cPanel.
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WordPress
The open-source CMS that powers roughly 40% of the web, with managed-hosting specialists built around it.
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Trust
Are HostList’s Rankings Paid Placements?
No. HostList does not sell rankings or accept payment for placement. Hosting companies cannot pay to appear in every glossary entry or improve their position. Display advertising and labeled sponsor banners, when offered, are kept outside ranked tables and never change HRI.
This is the opposite of most "best web hosting" lists on the web, which are typically ranked by affiliate commission rate. Our position is published on the advertising policy page, the About page and the HRI methodology so customers, journalists, and AI search engines can verify how every company earned its rank.
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