Hosting Terms
What is TTFB?
What TTFB really means, with the jargon taken out — plus the example that makes it obvious.
Straight answer first
TTFB measures the gap between asking for a page and receiving its first byte — the server-and-network share of how fast a site feels.
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 wraps up DNS lookup, connection setup, the TLS handshake and however long the server took to think, all before the weight of the page enters the picture. A high number points at hosting, caching or something slow in the backend. A low number with slow pages points at the pages themselves.
A cache hit flattens it. A page served from cache has a TTFB of network distance plus a few microseconds, which is why whether the page was cached dominates every other factor in the measurement.
TTFB (Time To First Byte), by comparison
How long after ordering before anything at all reaches the table. How much food arrives afterwards, and how long that takes to eat, is a separate question about portion size.
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
TTFB is the measurement that splits any speed complaint cleanly in two: is this the hosting or is this the page? It is also the floor under Core Web Vitals, since nothing can render before the first byte turns up.
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.
What it looks like day to day
A site measures 900ms uncached and 80ms from cache. The diagnosis writes itself: widen the cache coverage, then go and find out what the uncached path is spending its time computing.
Perfectly ordinary once you have seen it, which is rather the point: most hosting concepts are simple machinery wearing an intimidating name.
Where you will meet it on our platform
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: Cache, Core Web Vitals, NVMe and LiteSpeed.
Mailboxes on your own domain are part of the plan, never an add-on sold back to you at checkout.
Why we bothered with a hundred definitions
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.
SSL comes free with every plan and reissues itself before it lapses, so nobody has to diary the padlock.
- 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
Honest about what to skip
Most terms are recognise-level rather than operate-level, and the glossary says which is which.
The next reads, mapped
Read on into Cache and Core Web Vitals — terms rarely stand alone, so the neighbours are linked.
The stakes spelled out
Not only what it is, but when it turns out to be the answer to a problem you are having.
Plain English first
Every term defined for people who run sites, not for other sysadmins — jargon translated rather than restated.
One term, fully landed
TTFB defined, pictured by comparison and placed in your own control panel — recognise-level in a single read.
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 — Cache, Core Web Vitals and NVMe 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
- SSH, Git and Composer on the plans built for developers
- A domain free for year one when you order annually
- Staging copies so changes get tested before they go live
- Upgrades apply to the account in place, with no move between plans
- NVMe SSD storage on every shelf, not just the top one
- A 30-day money-back guarantee on every hosting plan
- A 99.9% uptime commitment, watched by monitoring day and night
- Site migration done for you by our staff, at no charge
- Nothing added at setup — no joining fee, ever
Across the Counter
The questions we get asked most
What counts as a good TTFB?
For a cached page served to a nearby visitor, comfortably under about 200ms. For an uncached dynamic page on healthy hosting, somewhere in the 200 to 500ms range. Anything sitting near a full second is telling you something specific: a gap in caching, a slow plugin, or a hosting plan that does not fit the site.
How do I bring TTFB down?
In order of payoff: page caching, which skips the computation entirely; PHP 8.x with OPcache, which makes the remaining computation faster; Redis and NVMe, which make the data faster to reach; then pruning slow plugins and slow external calls. Note that shrinking your images does not appear on this list.
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 does round-the-clock support actually stretch to?
People at the counter at every hour, and a scope that takes in the practical work: mailbox setup, DNS records, WordPress trouble, restores. Not 'the server responds, ticket closed'. Ask us something hard before you order — the reply is a fair sample of what you would get afterwards.
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.
Where do the servers actually sit?
Our hosting runs from European datacentres with London at the centre, behind server-level caching that keeps cached pages quick for visitors anywhere. For most sites the build of the platform — NVMe disks, LiteSpeed, sensible numbers of accounts per machine — decides the speed far more than the postcode does.
Read next
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