Hosting Terms
What is SPF?
SPF in plain English — the meaning, the comparison, and why it matters to anybody running a website.
Straight answer first
SPF is a DNS record listing the mail servers allowed to send on behalf of your domain, so a receiver can spot a forged sender.
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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It lives in one TXT record, and there must be exactly one. That record names your legitimate sources — the hosting mail servers, your newsletter platform, your CRM — usually through include mechanisms, and ends with a marker saying how strictly to treat anything else.
What it checks is the delivering server, not the message itself. That is why forwarding breaks it, why DKIM exists as its cryptographic counterpart, and why DMARC sits above the pair deciding what the results add up to.
SPF (Sender Policy Framework), by comparison
A list pinned up at reception naming the couriers allowed to deliver under your letterhead. Anyone checking the list can spot a van that was never on it.
Keep that picture in mind and most of the documentation you will ever read on the subject stops being mysterious.
Why it matters if you run a site
A missing or broken SPF record is the most common silent damage to deliverability. Receivers quietly downgrade unauthenticated mail and tell nobody, and the repair is one DNS record, carefully audited.
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 firm's SPF record covers its hosting servers and its invoicing platform. A spammer forging that domain from a machine in another country fails the check at every receiver that bothers to look.
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: DKIM, 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.
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
The stakes spelled out
Not only what it is, but when it turns out to be the answer to a problem you are having.
Grounded in real kit
Examples point at hosting you would actually use, not at an abstract diagram.
Pictures that stick
Each concept gets a comparison you will still remember at the moment you actually need it.
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 DKIM and DMARC — terms rarely stand alone, so the neighbours are linked.
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 — DKIM, DMARC and TXT Record finish this one's picture, and each is a two-minute read away.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- Spam and virus filtering fitted to every mailbox
- LiteSpeed caching running at the server, not bolted on by plugin
- WebP image optimisation built in and costing nothing
- A domain free for year one when you order annually
- Mailboxes that carry your own domain name
- DDoS filtering handled out at the network edge
- A free SSL certificate on every plan, reissued before it lapses
- SSH, Git and Composer on the plans built for developers
- Site migration done for you by our staff, at no charge
- Upgrades apply to the account in place, with no move between plans
Across the Counter
The questions we get asked most
Why must there be only a single SPF record?
Because the standard says so. Two records do not combine; they cancel each other out, and receivers treat the domain as having broken SPF entirely. When you add a new sending service, you fold it into the record you already have rather than publishing a second one.
What do ~all and -all mean at the end of the record?
They set the failure policy. A tilde means softfail: treat anything unlisted as suspicious. A minus means hardfail: reject it. Start soft while you work out who really sends on your behalf, then tighten once DKIM and DMARC reporting confirm the list is complete.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Read next
SMTP
SMTP is the protocol that sends email — from your mail app to your mail server, and from there between serv…
DMARC
DMARC is the policy sitting on top of SPF and DKIM — it tells receivers what to do with mail that fails tho…
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