Hosting Terms
What is Encryption?
What Encryption really means, with the jargon taken out — plus the example that makes it obvious.
Straight answer first
Encryption scrambles data so only whoever holds the right key can read it — the mathematics underneath HTTPS, SSH, secure email and every other private channel.
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
100+
Terms on the shelf
2 min
Typical read
Plain
English, we promise
24/7
People if you're stuck
It shows up in three shapes. In transit, TLS protects data moving between browser and server. At rest, encrypted storage protects data sitting still. And hashing, which only runs one way, protects passwords by making sure the original was never stored in the first place.
The modern web applies all of this by default — certificates, SFTP, mail submitted over an encrypted port — which leaves the site owner's job as mostly not switching off what is already working.
The everyday comparison
A locked pouch with the only two keys held at each end of the journey. Couriers, sorting offices and anyone watching can handle the pouch as much as they like; the contents exist for two people.
Keep that picture in mind and most of the documentation you will ever read on the subject stops being mysterious.
What is actually at stake
Every promise your site makes about safety — a secure checkout, a private message, an account nobody else can open — comes down to encryption applied at the right layer. Knowing which layer does what is how you keep those promises honest.
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.
Encryption out in the open
A customer's password travels under TLS, gets hashed before storage, and their session then rides on an encrypted cookie. Three uses of the same mathematics guarding one login.
Perfectly ordinary once you have seen it, which is rather the point: most hosting concepts are simple machinery wearing an intimidating name.
How this turns up in your own account
On our hosting this largely looks after itself — the platform applies sensible defaults, and the panel hands you the controls when you want them. The concepts worth reading next: TLS, HTTPS, SSH and Two-Factor Authentication.
SSL comes free with every plan and reissues itself before it lapses, so nobody has to diary the padlock.
A glossary written by the people on the counter
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.
Real people answer the counter at any hour, including the awkward questions other hosts wave off as out of scope.
- 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
Pictures that stick
Each concept gets a comparison you will still remember at the moment you actually need it.
Honest about what to skip
Most terms are recognise-level rather than operate-level, and the glossary says which is which.
Plain English first
Every term defined for people who run sites, not for other sysadmins — jargon translated rather than restated.
Grounded in real kit
Examples point at hosting you would actually use, not at an abstract diagram.
One term, fully landed
Encryption defined, pictured by comparison and placed in your own control panel — recognise-level in a single read.
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
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 — TLS, HTTPS and SSH finish this one's picture, and each is a two-minute read away.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- Nothing added at setup — no joining fee, ever
- WordPress Toolkit, with updates applied for you
- The renewal price printed on the tag matches the order price
- DDoS filtering handled out at the network edge
- A 99.9% uptime commitment, watched by monitoring day and night
- The Softaculous installer for one-click application setup
- cPanel, the panel the rest of the trade already knows
- NVMe SSD storage on every shelf, not just the top one
- A domain free for year one when you order annually
- Mailboxes that carry your own domain name
Across the Counter
The questions we get asked most
Is the data on my hosting encrypted?
In transit, thoroughly — HTTPS for the web, SFTP for files, TLS for mail. At rest, storage-layer practice varies with the platform and the context. The protections that travel with your software, such as hashed passwords and encrypted fields, are the ones you can rely on wherever the site ends up.
Can strong encryption actually be broken?
Current standards, not in any practical sense. Real attacks succeed against implementation mistakes, stolen keys and compromised endpoints rather than against the mathematics. Which is why careful key handling and up-to-date software deserve your attention far more than worrying about ciphers does.
Is the SSL certificate genuinely free?
On every plan, with nothing held back. The certificate is issued the moment your domain points here and reissues itself well before expiry. The encryption is the same as a paid DV certificate — paid tiers exist only for wildcard coverage or organisation validation, which most sites never need.
Can I test changes somewhere safe first?
Yes — plans with staging let you clone the live site, work on the copy, then push it across when you are satisfied. It is the difference between hoping an update behaves and knowing that it does before any customer meets it.
Does hosting come with mailboxes?
It does — mailboxes on your own domain ship with every hosting plan, with webmail, IMAP, POP and SMTP access and spam filtering fitted as standard. There is also standalone email hosting for domains whose website lives somewhere else entirely.
Does the price climb when the term is up?
No. What you pay to order is what you pay to renew, year after year. We do not run teaser rates, so there is no year-two ambush waiting in the calendar, and your bookkeeping can treat the hosting line as a fixed number.
Are backups included, and can I put one back myself?
A backup is taken daily on every plan, and the restore is yours to run from the panel in minutes — files, databases or both, at three in the morning without waiting on a ticket. Keeping your own copy offsite as well is never a bad habit, and nothing here stops you.
Read next
TLS (Transport Layer Security)
TLS is the cryptographic protocol doing the real work behind HTTPS — the modern replacement for SSL, whose …
SSH (Secure Shell)
SSH is the encrypted protocol that lets you drive a server from a text prompt — running commands, moving fi…
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