Hosting Terms
What is IP Address?
What IP Address really means, with the jargon taken out — plus the example that makes it obvious.
Straight answer first
An IP address is the numeric label that locates a machine on a network — the actual destination sitting behind every domain name you type.
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
0
Terms left unexplained
100+
Definitions, cross-linked
Real
Examples from real kit
Free
To read, naturally
The familiar dotted IPv4 numbers such as 203.0.113.10 are scarce enough that shared hosting normally puts many sites behind one address, with the server sorting them out by the hostname each request asks for. A dedicated address gives one site the number to itself.
Reputation sticks to addresses. Mail sent from an address inherits whatever history that address has, which is why senders care a great deal about the neighbourhood they are sending from.
The picture that makes IP Address stick
The grid reference behind a street address. The name is there so humans can remember it; the coordinates are what the delivery driver's satnav actually steers by.
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
Addresses turn up in real decisions: dedicated ones for services that insist, mail reputation on a VPS, firewall rules, and reading server logs where every visitor shows up as a number before anything else.
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
A VPS owner's mail deliverability rests partly on the clean history of their own dedicated address — one reason every VPS plan here ships with a dedicated IPv4 attached to the server.
Multiply that example by every website on the internet and you have the concept's entire job description in one go.
Where you will meet it on our platform
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 IPv6, A Record, DNS and VPS.
Order an annual plan and the first year of your domain registration is on the house.
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.
What you pay on day one is what you pay at renewal, so the year-two invoice holds no surprises worth opening early.
- 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.
One term, fully landed
IP Address defined, pictured by comparison and placed in your own control panel — recognise-level in a single read.
Honest about what to skip
Most terms are recognise-level rather than operate-level, and the glossary says which is which.
Linked, never siloed
Related terms cross-reference each other, so one lookup grows into a working understanding.
The next reads, mapped
Read on into IPv6 and A Record — terms rarely stand alone, so the neighbours are linked.
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
Open the control panel and find where this concept lives — seeing it attached to your own site is what turns a definition into understanding.
- 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 — IPv6, A Record and DNS finish this one's picture, and each is a two-minute read away.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- Mailboxes that carry your own domain name
- Nothing added at setup — no joining fee, ever
- LiteSpeed caching running at the server, not bolted on by plugin
- Real people on the counter, every hour of every day
- DDoS filtering handled out at the network edge
- A domain free for year one when you order annually
- The renewal price printed on the tag matches the order price
- Spam and virus filtering fitted to every mailbox
- A backup taken daily, with restores you run yourself
- Upgrades apply to the account in place, with no move between plans
Across the Counter
The questions we get asked most
Do I need a dedicated IP address for my website?
Rarely for the website itself. SNI ended the days of one certificate per address, and shared addresses serve sites perfectly well. The genuine cases are certain legacy integrations, some firewall whitelisting arrangements, and controlling mail reputation on a server you send from.
Can somebody find me from my site's IP address?
They find the server, which means the datacentre and the host, not your home. Your own location is not in the routing at all. It is in whatever contact details you choose to publish, which is a separate decision entirely.
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.
Who actually runs the company?
Hosting Seller is a trading name of Bohzo Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales — a real business with a public record and terms published under English law. Looking that up is worth doing about any host before you hand over your domain.
How quickly can I be up and running?
Minutes, not days. The account opens the moment the order clears, the domain — free for year one on annual plans — attaches straight away, and the one-click installer puts WordPress or any of 400+ applications on the page before you leave your chair. Already have a site elsewhere? Hand it over and we move it free, usually inside a day.
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.
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.
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Domain Names
Search, register and transfer names — year one free with annual hosting.
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