Applies to: All plans.
New to hosting? Here are short, plain-English definitions of the terms you'll see across your client area, cPanel and this Help Center. Skim it now, or come back when a word trips you up. Each entry links to a fuller article where one exists.
Domains and DNS
Nameserver — The servers that tell the internet where to find your domain's DNS. To use Maxinodes hosting you point your domain at our nameservers: ns1.maxinodes.com and ns2.maxinodes.com. Once set, your DNS is managed by us, on our own nameservers.
DNS — The "phone book" of the internet. It translates your domain name into the address of the server that answers for it. At Maxinodes you manage your DNS records in the client area, not in cPanel.
DNS record — A single entry in your domain's DNS. The common ones are:
| Record | What it does |
|---|---|
| A | Points a name (like your domain) at an IPv4 address. Your hosting node's IP is 185.185.49.198, and this is one of the records we create for you. |
| AAAA | The IPv6 equivalent of an A record. Our node is also reachable over IPv6 at 2a00:7c80:0:286:c::10. Customer websites are served over both IPv4 and IPv6 (dual-stack), so when your domain uses our nameservers we create this record for you too — you do not have to add anything. |
| CNAME | Points one name at another name (an alias), e.g. www to your domain. |
| MX | Says which mail servers receive email for your domain. For the mailboxes included in your plan it is mx.maxinodes.com, created for you; for Professional Email it points at Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace instead. |
| TXT | Holds text values used for verification and email security, such as SPF and DMARC. |
Propagation — The delay while a DNS or nameserver change spreads across the internet. It's usually minutes to a few hours, up to roughly 24–48 hours in the worst case, governed by each record's TTL.
TTL (time to live) — How long resolvers are allowed to cache a record before checking again. A lower TTL means changes take effect faster.
Security and certificates
SSL / HTTPS — SSL is the certificate that encrypts traffic between visitors and your site; HTTPS is the secure (padlock) version of http://. Every plan gets free AutoSSL (Let's Encrypt) that issues and renews automatically.
Your panels
cPanel — Your per-account hosting control panel: files, FTP, subdomains, databases, cron jobs, PHP settings and SSL tools. You reach it by single sign-on from your service page in the client area.
Client area — The Maxinodes portal at my.maxinodes.com, where you handle billing, invoices, payments, your services (view or cancel them; plan changes are made by our team on request), domains, DNS records and your profile. It's the portal, not "the dashboard." Support is not here — that is the Help Center at support.maxinodes.com.
Resources and performance
Inode — A count of the individual files and folders in your account. Each file (including cache and temporary files) is one inode. Many hosts cap this count; we do not — your storage limit is disk space. A very large file count still slows down backups and migrations, so it is worth keeping tidy.
CloudLinux / LVE — The technology that gives every account its own ring-fenced share of CPU, memory and processes (an "LVE"). It keeps one busy site from slowing down its neighbours.
508 / "Resource Limit Reached" — What visitors briefly see when your account exceeds its CloudLinux limits. It's not a full outage — it clears when usage drops. Fix it by caching, optimising, or upgrading your plan.
LiteSpeed — Our high-performance web server (LSWS). It serves your pages quickly and works with the recommended caching plugin below.
LSCache (LiteSpeed Cache) — The recommended caching plugin (for example for WordPress). It stores ready-made copies of your pages so they load faster and use fewer resources.
Domains, sites and email
Addon domain — A second, separate website hosted in the same cPanel account, with its own domain and its own folder. The number you can add depends on your plan.
Subdomain — A prefix on your existing domain, like shop.yourdomain.com or blog.yourdomain.com, used to run a separate section or site under the same domain.
Mailbox (email account) — An address on your domain, like info@yourdomain.com, with its own password and storage for its mail. Every plan includes mailboxes; cPanel and the client area call them Email Accounts. They share your plan's storage.
Webmail — Reading and sending mail in a web browser, with no app to set up. For the mailboxes in your plan, use the Webmail button on your service page, or https://webmail.yourdomain.com.
IMAP / POP3 / SMTP — How mail apps talk to a mail server. IMAP keeps your mail on the server and in sync across devices, POP3 downloads it to one device, and SMTP sends. A mail app needs these settings for the mailboxes in your plan; they are shown next to each mailbox in the client area.
Junk folder — Where incoming mail that our filter scores as spam is filed, instead of your inbox. Check it now and then for anything misfiled.
SPF, DKIM and DMARC — DNS records that let receiving servers check that mail from your domain is genuine: SPF lists who may send, DKIM adds a signature, and DMARC says what to do with mail that fails. On our nameservers they are added for you for the mailboxes in your plan. See How to set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC correctly.
Professional Email — Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, billed per seat: the upgrade from the mailboxes included in your plan, with shared calendars, Teams or shared drives. You read mail at outlook.office.com (Microsoft 365) or mail.google.com (Google Workspace), and email clients connect using the provider's own automatic setup.
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