Hosting Terms
What is TXT Record?
TXT Record in plain English — the meaning, the comparison, and why it matters to anybody running a website.
Straight answer first
A TXT record holds free-form text in your DNS zone — the mechanism behind domain verifications, SPF policies and DKIM signing keys.
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
Only whoever controls a domain can publish records in its zone, so a TXT record works as proof of control. That is why every 'verify your domain' screen hands you a token and asks you to put it there.
Email authentication lives in the same place. SPF's list of permitted senders, DKIM's public keys and DMARC's enforcement instructions are all TXT records published under particular names.
The picture that makes TXT Record stick
A noticeboard only the keyholder can pin things to. A service asks you to pin up a specific note, comes back to read the board, and the fact the note is there proves the keys are in your pocket.
Keep that picture in mind and most of the documentation you will ever read on the subject stops being mysterious.
What it means for your own site
Running a domain today is largely TXT wrangling. Mail deliverability and every third-party integration route through these records, and deleting the ones nobody recognises is how verified services quietly disconnect themselves weeks later.
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.
TXT Record out in the open
Setting up a workspace product, an owner publishes the verification token as a TXT record, then the SPF policy, then the DKIM key. Three pastes prove ownership and authenticate outgoing mail at the same time.
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
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 SPF, DKIM, DMARC and DNS.
SSL comes free with every plan and reissues itself before it lapses, so nobody has to diary the padlock.
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.
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
Plain English first
Every term defined for people who run sites, not for other sysadmins — jargon translated rather than restated.
One term, fully landed
TXT Record defined, pictured by comparison and placed in your own control panel — recognise-level in a single read.
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.
The next reads, mapped
Read on into SPF and DKIM — 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.
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 — SPF, DKIM and DMARC finish this one's picture, and each is a two-minute read away.
In the Box
Packed with every plan
- A free SSL certificate on every plan, reissued before it lapses
- Staging copies so changes get tested before they go live
- A domain free for year one when you order annually
- Webmail in the browser plus IMAP, POP and SMTP for your own client
- Upgrades apply to the account in place, with no move between plans
- PHP versions picked per site from the panel
- DDoS filtering handled out at the network edge
- Real people on the counter, every hour of every day
- Mailboxes that carry your own domain name
- One-click installs for WordPress and 400+ other applications
Across the Counter
The questions we get asked most
How many TXT records can one domain hold?
Plenty. Verification tokens and signing keys sit side by side as separate records with no trouble. SPF is the exception: exactly one SPF-format record is permitted, and adding a second does not extend the first, it invalidates both of them.
Is it safe to delete TXT records I no longer recognise?
Only the ones you can name. Services re-check their verifications on their own schedule, so removing a token can un-verify something weeks later with no obvious cause. Keep a note of what each record is for, and delete by name rather than by guess.
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 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.
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.
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.
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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