Plain-English definitions of the hosting terms used across GetBestHost.
- 3-year true cost
- Intro price × promo months + renewal × remaining months, over 36 months. The fairest way to compare hosts.
- Backups (offsite)
- Copies of your site stored away from the server. Check how often they run and what a restore costs.
- Bandwidth
- The amount of data your site can send to visitors in a month. "Unmetered" plans still have fair-use limits in the terms of service.
- BDIX
- Bangladesh Internet Exchange. Local peering that makes traffic between Bangladeshi networks fast. BDIX hosting helps only local visitors.
- CDN
- Content Delivery Network. Copies of your static files on servers worldwide, so visitors download them from nearby. Cloudflare has a free tier.
- cPanel
- A popular hosting control panel for managing files, email, databases and domains.
- Data center (region)
- The physical location of your server. Closer to your visitors usually means lower latency.
- Dedicated server
- A whole physical server rented for you alone. Most power and most cost.
- DNS
- Domain Name System. It turns your domain into the server’s IP address. Changes can take minutes to hours to propagate.
- Domain privacy (WHOIS privacy)
- Hides your personal contact details from the public domain registry.
- Email hosting
- A mailbox service for name@yourdomain.com. Some web hosts include it; cloud hosts usually do not.
- GPU instance
- A cloud server with a graphics card, used to run larger AI models quickly. Usually billed hourly.
- Hourly billing
- You pay per hour the server exists, capped at a monthly maximum. Common on DigitalOcean, Vultr and Hetzner.
- Inode
- One file or folder. Shared hosts often cap inodes, which can limit large sites even when disk space is free.
- Intro (promo) price
- The discounted monthly price for the first term, which often needs to be prepaid for 12 to 48 months.
- IPv4 address
- A public server address. Some VPS providers charge extra for IPv4.
- KVM
- A virtualisation technology that gives each VPS its own dedicated kernel and resources.
- Latency
- The round-trip delay between a visitor and the server, in milliseconds. Distance is the biggest factor.
- LiteSpeed
- A fast web server and caching technology used by several shared hosts.
- Managed hosting
- The host handles server updates, security, caching and often backups for you.
- Money-back guarantee
- A refund window, often 30 days. Domains and add-ons are usually excluded.
- n8n
- An open-source workflow automation tool, often self-hosted on a VPS to run AI agents and integrations.
- NVMe
- A fast type of SSD storage. Faster disk I/O helps databases and busy sites.
- Ollama
- Open-source software for running large language models locally on a server or PC.
- Overselling
- When a host sells more resources than the server has, betting that not everyone uses them at once.
- Renewal price
- The regular monthly price after the promo term ends. Often 2 to 6 times the intro price. It is the most important number for long-term cost.
- Reseller hosting
- Hosting that lets you create separate accounts for clients under your own brand.
- Root access
- Full administrator control of a server, available on VPS and dedicated servers.
- Many websites share one server’s resources. Cheapest, and fine for most small sites.
- Snapshot
- A point-in-time image of a whole VPS that you can restore.
- SSL/TLS certificate
- Encrypts traffic (HTTPS). Free certificates from Let’s Encrypt are standard on good hosts.
- Staging site
- A private copy of your site for testing changes before they go live.
- TTFB
- Time To First Byte. How long the server takes to start responding. A key server-speed signal.
- Unmanaged VPS
- A raw virtual server: cheaper, but you handle updates, firewall and backups.
- Uptime
- The percentage of time a site is reachable. 99.9% uptime still allows about 43 minutes of downtime a month.
- vCPU
- A virtual CPU core assigned to a VPS. AI agents and n8n need RAM more than CPU.
- VPS
- Virtual Private Server: a slice of a physical server with guaranteed RAM and CPU and root access.
- WHM
- WebHost Manager. The admin panel resellers use to create cPanel accounts.
- WooCommerce
- The e-commerce plugin for WordPress. Stores need more CPU and RAM than blogs.
- WordPress hosting
- Hosting tuned for WordPress, with one-click install, caching and auto-updates.