Hosting Terms

What is A Record?

A Record in plain English — the meaning, the comparison, and why it matters to anybody running a website.

Straight answer first

An A record maps a hostname straight onto an IPv4 address — the DNS entry that tells browsers which machine is actually holding your website.

The sections below open it up properly — how it works, why a site owner should care, and a concrete example of it doing its job.

Written by the Hosting Seller staff · Checked 1 August 2026

Terms left unexplained

100+

Definitions, cross-linked

Real

Examples from real kit

Free

To read, naturally

It is the workhorse of web DNS: example.com becomes 203.0.113.10 and the browser knows where to knock. The AAAA record does the same job for IPv6, and between them names turn into destinations that can actually be routed to.

Put two A records on one name and traffic alternates between the addresses, which is a crude way to spread load and also the classic accident when an edit adds a record instead of replacing one.

The picture that makes A Record stick

The line in the directory that finally gives a street number. Everything else can refer you onwards, but somewhere the trail has to end at a real place a van can drive to.

Comparisons simplify, naturally — but this one holds together well enough to reason with, and reasoning is the whole point of a glossary.

Why this one is worth knowing

When you point a domain at hosting without handing over the whole zone, the A record is the entry you set. And when a site seems to flip at random between the old server and the new one, a leftover second A record is almost always the reason.

That is the test for any technical term, incidentally — not 'do I understand it fully' but 'do I know when it is the answer to my problem'. For this one, you now do.

What it looks like day to day

Keeping DNS at a third party, an owner points only the website here with a single A record aimed at our server's address, leaving mail and every other record exactly where they were.

Multiply that example by every website on the internet and you have the concept's entire job description in one go.

How this turns up in your own account

You will meet it in the control panel and occasionally in a support conversation, usually already set the right way. If this term made sense, the natural next reads are CNAME Record, DNS, IP Address and Nameserver.

Real people answer the counter at any hour, including the awkward questions other hosts wave off as out of scope.

Looking up a domain name and registering it

Why we bothered with a hundred definitions

Every confusing term in hosting turns into a support ticket sooner or later, so we defined the hundred most common ones properly, once, in the plain English we would use across the counter.

NVMe disks and LiteSpeed caching sit on the shelf at every price point, not behind a premium tier.

100+ terms, all in plain English
Everyday comparisons and real examples
Related concepts linked together
Written by the people on the desk

Why Hosting Seller

On every plan, as standard

Plain English first

Every term defined for people who run sites, not for other sysadmins — jargon translated rather than restated.

Honest about what to skip

Most terms are recognise-level rather than operate-level, and the glossary says which is which.

The stakes spelled out

Not only what it is, but when it turns out to be the answer to a problem you are having.

Linked, never siloed

Related terms cross-reference each other, so one lookup grows into a working understanding.

Pictures that stick

Each concept gets a comparison you will still remember at the moment you actually need it.

Grounded in real kit

Examples point at hosting you would actually use, not at an abstract diagram.

First Steps

From choosing to live

1
Find it in your own account
The quickest way to learn a hosting term is to find it in your own panel; five minutes of looking beats an hour of reading about it.
2
Check what the defaults are
Our platform ships sensible defaults for this — check rather than assume, and you will know your setup instead of hoping about it.
3
Follow the terms next door
Concepts travel in packs — CNAME Record, DNS and IP Address finish this one's picture, and each is a two-minute read away.

In the Box

Packed with every plan

PHP versions picked per site from the panel
Site migration done for you by our staff, at no charge
LiteSpeed caching running at the server, not bolted on by plugin
Real people on the counter, every hour of every day
A 99.9% uptime commitment, watched by monitoring day and night
DDoS filtering handled out at the network edge
Nothing added at setup — no joining fee, ever
A free SSL certificate on every plan, reissued before it lapses
Spam and virus filtering fitted to every mailbox
SSH, Git and Composer on the plans built for developers

Across the Counter

The questions we get asked most

A record or CNAME — which one do I want here?

An A record points at a number; a CNAME points at another hostname and inherits whatever that name resolves to. Use A when you are aiming straight at a server, and CNAME for services that publish a hostname precisely so their addresses can change underneath it.

My A record change has not taken effect — why?

One of three things: caching, because the old TTL is still running; the edit landed on DNS the domain does not delegate to; or a second conflicting record survived. Those cover effectively every case, and that is the order to check them in.

Which control panel comes with the account?

cPanel, which the whole trade already knows. That means every tutorial online matches what you see, your backups restore onto any cPanel host anywhere, and what you learn here stays useful for life. Plesk and DirectAdmin are stocked on specific plans for anyone who prefers them.

What uptime do you commit to, and who is watching?

We commit to 99.9% uptime and watch it continuously. That figure is an operational target rather than a poster line, and the alerting behind it usually has an engineer on a problem before the first customer notices anything is wrong.

Can I set the PHP version myself?

Yes — PHP versions are chosen per site from the control panel, so an old application and a current one can sit side by side on the same account. Extensions and per-site settings live in the same screen, and none of it needs a support ticket.

Is there a refund if it does not suit?

Yes — thirty days. Put the hosting through real work, and if it is not right, ask for the money back and you get it; there is no retention script to survive first. Domain registrations are the one carve-out, because registries take that fee the moment the name is placed.

What happens to my files if I leave?

The site and the files stay yours. Pull a full backup from the panel whenever you like, before or during cancellation. Domains remain registered in your name for the term you paid for and can move to any registrar once the standard 60-day window has passed.

Packing up and moving host? Take our checklist.

A plain running order for a move nobody notices: what to copy first, how to carry email across without dropping a single message, when to point DNS, and the two slips behind nearly every hour of downtime we get called about.

Start on a plan with a plain price tag.

From a first website to a rack of servers, moving up is a change to your account rather than a migration.

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