Glossary
Website Cost Glossary
Plain-English definitions for domain, hosting, email, SSL, WordPress, website builder, maintenance, renewal, and migration terms.
- Annual billing: A plan paid once per year. It may be cheaper than monthly billing but can create lock-in.
- Backup: A copy of website files, databases, or settings used to restore a site after a mistake, hack, outage, or failed update.
- Bandwidth: The amount of data transferred from a site to visitors. Some plans call it unmetered but still apply fair-use limits.
- CMS: Content management system, such as WordPress.
- Control panel: A dashboard such as cPanel or a provider console used to manage hosting, files, databases, email, SSL, and backups.
- Domain: The human-readable address of a website, such as example.com.
- Domain privacy: A service that masks or limits public exposure of some domain registration contact information where allowed.
- DNS: Domain Name System records that connect a domain to hosting, email, and other services.
- Hosting: The service or infrastructure that stores and serves website files to visitors.
- Introductory price: A first-term promotional price that may increase at renewal.
- Managed hosting: Hosting where the provider handles more technical operations than a basic self-managed plan.
- Migration: Moving a website, domain, DNS, email, or platform from one provider or setup to another.
- Premium domain: A domain priced higher than normal because of perceived value or existing ownership.
- Renewal price: The price charged when a domain, hosting plan, app, or platform renews after the first term.
- SSL certificate: A certificate that enables HTTPS and encrypted connections.
- Staging site: A private copy of a site used to test updates before they go live.
- Static website: A website made of files served without a database or server-side application.
- VPS: Virtual private server. A hosting environment with more isolation and control than typical shared hosting.
- Website builder: A hosted platform that combines design tools, templates, hosting, and support.
- WooCommerce: A WordPress ecommerce plugin used to build online stores.
- WordPress.org: The open-source WordPress software that requires hosting.
- WordPress.com: A hosted WordPress platform where hosting is bundled into the service.
- Year-two cost: The cost after first-year promotions, free trials, or bundled introductory offers end.