Hosting Terms

What is DKIM?

What DKIM really means, with the jargon taken out — plus the example that makes it obvious.

Straight answer first

DKIM signs your outgoing mail cryptographically, so a receiver can confirm it really came from your domain and nobody edited it on the way.

Below: the fuller explanation, a picture that makes it stick, why it matters in practice, and where you will actually run into it.

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

Your mail server signs each message with a private key. The matching public key sits in DNS as a selector record for receivers to look up and check against. Unlike SPF, the signature travels inside the message itself, which means it survives being forwarded.

Each service that sends on your behalf signs with its own selector, so several keys live happily side by side. Hosting mail, your newsletter tool and your CRM can all be verified independently of one another.

The everyday comparison

A wax seal pressed into every letter, matched against the seal you have published. An unbroken seal proves who sent it and proves nobody opened it, no matter how many hands relayed it.

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

What is actually at stake

DKIM feeds your sending reputation and it is what makes DMARC enforcement possible. When it is missing, the symptom is mail landing in spam folders. When you add it, the work is usually one click in the panel and one DNS record.

You do not need to work at this layer every day. You need to recognise it when it explains something, which is exactly the moment this page earns its keep.

One concrete example

An invoice forwarded from one address to another still verifies when it lands. The DKIM seal inside the message came through the forwarding hop that broke SPF's check on the sending server.

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

The Hosting Seller angle

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 SPF, DMARC, TXT Record and SMTP.

What you pay on day one is what you pay at renewal, so the year-two invoice holds no surprises worth opening early.

Unexplained jargon is bad service

We treat unexplained jargon as a service failure. This glossary is the support desk's accumulated translations, published where a search engine can hand them out for us.

Mailboxes on your own domain are part of the plan, never an add-on sold back to you at checkout.

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.

One term, fully landed

DKIM defined, pictured by comparison and placed in your own control panel — recognise-level in a single read.

The next reads, mapped

Read on into SPF and DMARC — terms rarely stand alone, so the neighbours are linked.

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.

Linked, never siloed

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

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
Confirm how your account has this set. It is usually right by default here, and now you will know rather than guess.
3
Follow the terms next door
Concepts travel in packs — SPF, DMARC and TXT Record finish this one's picture, and each is a two-minute read away.

In the Box

Packed with every plan

DDoS filtering handled out at the network edge
cPanel, the panel the rest of the trade already knows
The Softaculous installer for one-click application setup
Mailboxes that carry your own domain name
SSH, Git and Composer on the plans built for developers
Staging copies so changes get tested before they go live
A backup taken daily, with restores you run yourself
PHP versions picked per site from the panel
NVMe SSD storage on every shelf, not just the top one
One-click installs for WordPress and 400+ other applications

Across the Counter

The questions we get asked most

Do I need SPF and DKIM, or will one do?

You want both, because they break in different places. SPF fails on forwarding, DKIM can fail when a mailing list rewrites content, and DMARC passes as long as one of them lines up. The pair plus DMARC is the standard arrangement receivers now expect to see.

What is a DKIM selector?

It is the label that tells a receiver where to find a particular key, published as selector._domainkey.yourdomain. Because each signing service uses its own selector, one domain can host several keys at once. Your panel and each sending platform will tell you which record to publish.

Can I bring a domain I already own?

Yes, and transfers in are routine. Unlock the name at your present registrar, collect the auth code, then start the transfer from your client area. Whatever registration time is left comes across with it, and DNS keeps answering the whole way through.

Do you shift an existing site across at no charge?

We do. Open a ticket with the login details for your current host and the whole lot comes over: files, databases, mailboxes and configuration. You check the copy before DNS changes hands, and the old site keeps serving customers until the new one takes the traffic, so nobody ever sees a gap.

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.

How do I read the mail when I am away from the desk?

Webmail opens in any browser, and every mailbox also speaks IMAP, POP and SMTP — so the mail app on your phone, the client on your desktop and webmail all show the same messages in the same order.

How do I pay, and does it bill again on its own?

Orders go through a secure checkout by credit or debit card, and the renewal is taken at the same price you first paid. Every invoice sits in the client area for you to read, and switching auto-renewal off is a toggle in your account rather than a phone call.

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.

Do the launch properly this time.

Free SSL, a free move in, renewals charged at the order price, and human support around the clock. That is the whole offer.

See the plans