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Welcome to Maxinodes — what happens after you order

Maxim Tsitsejev
Updated

Applies to: All plans

Welcome to Maxinodes. Once your order is paid, your hosting account is set up automatically within minutes, and we email you a welcome message with everything you need to log in and get started. This article explains each step — what happens behind the scenes, what to check first, and how onboarding differs between Self-Managed (you drive, we support) and Managed (we do the heavy lifting for you).

1. Your order and payment

When you check out in the client area at my.maxinodes.com, you choose your plan, billing cycle, and any add-ons. Pay the first invoice to start provisioning.

  • Payment method: You pay by card or in cryptocurrency.
  • VAT: We do not charge VAT at checkout at the moment, so no VAT is added to your invoice total. You can still add your VAT number and company details to your profile for later.
  • Guarantee: Every plan is eligible for a 30-day money-back guarantee on your initial order (renewals are not covered). On a 12 or 24-month term, a new order starts at a discounted first-term price, once per customer, and then renews for the same term at the plan's renewal price — see Billing cycles and how much you save.

Result: Your invoice shows as paid in Billing -> My Invoices, and your new service appears under Services -> My Services.

2. Provisioning (this is automatic)

As soon as payment clears, our system creates your hosting account on the server, sets up your cPanel login, and creates a DNS zone for your domain on our own nameservers, with the records your website and email need. This usually takes only a few minutes.

You do not need to do anything during this step. If a service stays in a "Pending" state for more than a short while, contact us.

3. Your welcome email

We send a welcome email to the address on your account. Keep it — it contains your account details and direct links into the client area and into cPanel. If you cannot find it, check your spam folder, then log in to the client area and open the service under Services -> My Services, where the same details are available.

4. Your first login

You will use two different control panels. Keep them straight:

  • Client area (my.maxinodes.com): billing, invoices, services, DNS records, domains, your mailboxes (on the service page: Email Accounts, Email Forwarders, Webmail), and your profile and 2FA. Manage your DNS records here — not in cPanel. (Support is separate: our Help Center at support.maxinodes.com.)
  • cPanel: the hosting panel for your website — files, databases, FTP, subdomains, PHP version, and SSL tools. Open it by single sign-on: go to Services -> My Services, open your service, and click Log in to cPanel.

Result: You can reach both panels and see your hosting account.

5. What to do first

A few quick wins get your site live:

  1. Point your domain at Maxinodes. At your registrar, set your nameservers to ns1.maxinodes.com and ns2.maxinodes.com. This is what connects your domain to our hosting and DNS. If the domain already has email somewhere, read the email step below first.
  2. Upload or migrate your site. Use cPanel's File Manager or FTP, or have us migrate it (see below).
  3. Check your free SSL. AutoSSL is issued automatically for every plan and auto-renews, so your site gets HTTPS without you buying a certificate.
  4. Set up your email. Your plan includes mailboxes on your domain: create them on your service page in the client area under Email Accounts, and open them in the browser with Webmail. Already have email on this domain? Tell us before you switch the nameservers or cancel your old hosting: we check where your mail will go and move it with you, free. For shared calendars, Teams or shared drives, order Professional Email (Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace) per seat in the client area store; or keep your own provider and point your MX records at it.

Customer websites are served over both IPv4 and IPv6 (dual-stack). When your domain uses our nameservers, the zone we create contains both the A and the AAAA records for your domain, www, cpanel and ftp — pointing at our IPv4 address 185.185.49.198 and our IPv6 address 2a00:7c80:0:286:c::10 — so you do not have to add anything. AutoSSL (Let's Encrypt) covers both addresses.

Self-Managed vs Managed: how onboarding differs

Self-Managed: You set up and run things yourself, with support by email and through the Help Center at support.maxinodes.com to guide you. There is no uptime SLA. Migration is free if you would like us to move your site across, and you manage your own DNS and updates. Mailboxes are included, and you create and manage them yourself in the client area; moving your existing mail in is free. Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace is a separate product that follows your seats, not this line: order it through us and we set it up and run it for you here too. Self-Managed is a great fit if you are comfortable in cPanel.

Managed (we help): We take onboarding off your plate. Managed includes a free migration, 24/7 monitoring, managed updates and patching, and an uptime SLA with service credits. Mailboxes are included too: on request we create them, set up your mail apps and reset mailbox passwords, and moving your existing mail in is free. Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace seats ordered through us come with guided setup of their own, on either line. Growth and higher plans add a named account manager. If you would rather hand the technical bits to us, this is the line to be on.

Not sure which you are on, or thinking of switching? See the related articles below.

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