Hosting Terms
What is Firewall?
What Firewall really means, with the jargon taken out — plus the example that makes it obvious.
Straight answer first
A firewall filters network traffic against rules you set — deciding which connections may reach which services, and turning everything else away by default.
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
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On a server the sensible shape is deny everything inbound, then allow what you actually need: SSH and the web ports, typically. Everything else becomes unreachable rather than merely unadvertised. Host firewalls such as ufw or firewalld enforce this on the machine itself, while network-level filtering does it further upstream.
It pairs with application security rather than replacing it. The firewall decides what can be reached at all. What happens on the ports you did open is the job of the WAF and of keeping your applications tidy.
The everyday comparison
A gatehouse with a list of expected visitors. Named callers are directed to the right department; everyone else meets a closed gate instead of wandering into an unlocked reception.
Keep that picture in mind and most of the documentation you will ever read on the subject stops being mysterious.
Why this one is worth knowing
A server without a firewall offers every running service to the internet's constant scanning traffic. Setting up a default-deny policy takes about five commands and is some of the highest-value time anyone spends administering a machine.
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.
One concrete example
A VPS runs its database privately. The firewall opens the web ports to the world and the database port to localhost only, so the scanners hammering that port from every continent find nothing answering.
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
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: WAF, DDoS Attack, VPS and SSH.
SSL comes free with every plan and reissues itself before it lapses, so nobody has to diary the padlock.
Unexplained jargon is bad service
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
One term, fully landed
Firewall defined, pictured by comparison and placed in your own control panel — recognise-level in a single read.
Plain English first
Every term defined for people who run sites, not for other sysadmins — jargon translated rather than restated.
Linked, never siloed
Related terms cross-reference each other, so one lookup grows into a working understanding.
The next reads, mapped
Read on into WAF and DDoS Attack — terms rarely stand alone, so the neighbours are linked.
Honest about what to skip
Most terms are recognise-level rather than operate-level, and the glossary says which is which.
Pictures that stick
Each concept gets a comparison you will still remember at the moment you actually need it.
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 — WAF, DDoS Attack and VPS finish this one's picture, and each is a two-minute read away.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- A domain free for year one when you order annually
- Staging copies so changes get tested before they go live
- Webmail in the browser plus IMAP, POP and SMTP for your own client
- SSH, Git and Composer on the plans built for developers
- One-click installs for WordPress and 400+ other applications
- Site migration done for you by our staff, at no charge
- A backup taken daily, with restores you run yourself
- WordPress Toolkit, with updates applied for you
- PHP versions picked per site from the panel
- DDoS filtering handled out at the network edge
Across the Counter
The questions we get asked most
Do shared hosting customers have a firewall to manage?
No. Platform-level firewalls and protections are ours to run, and that is a large part of what managed hosting means. Firewall administration starts with a VPS, where the machine is yours and so is the guest list.
How is a firewall different from a WAF, exactly?
They work at different heights. The firewall filters by port and address, answering whether a connection may reach a service at all. The WAF reads the HTTP content of connections that got through, asking whether the request is an attack. A serious setup runs both.
What if the site outgrows the plan I bought?
You move up in place. Plan changes are made from the client area with no migration and no downtime, and the range runs from small shared accounts through VPS to whole dedicated servers. Growing becomes a line change on your account rather than a hunt for a new host.
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.
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.
Can one plan hold more than a single website?
From the Pro tier upward, yes — several sites, each with its own domain, mailboxes and certificate, all under one account. If those extra sites belong to clients rather than to you, reseller hosting is the better fit: it gives each one proper separation.
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.
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