Hosting 101 for Account Executives
Technical fluency for partner conversations — the industry, the stacks, and where 10Web fits.
TECHNICAL FLUENCY ~60 MIN READ SELF-PACEDWhy this matters for you
Every hosting company you speak with is built on the same handful of technologies — arranged differently. Once you understand the pieces, every partner conversation becomes a pattern-match exercise: which stack do they run, which integration approach fits, and what play do we sell them?
cPanel, WHMCS, Plesk, Softaculous
These terms are the daily vocabulary of hosting companies. When a prospect says “we use WHMCS with cPanel,” you should immediately know what they build, where users click, and which APIs are available to us.
Three integration approaches, three stack archetypes
Partners fall into roughly three architectural patterns. Recognising the pattern tells you which of our integration approaches (1, 2, or 3) to propose — and why.
Bundle, add-on, or standalone
A commodity shared host with thin margins needs a different go-to-market than a premium managed WordPress brand. Knowing their business model informs whether to bundle, upsell, or launch a new product line.
Hosting industry landscape
Web hosting is a ~$100B+ global market growing in the high single digits. It is mature, competitive, and structurally consolidating — which is why every host is hunting for differentiation. That is the wedge we sell into.
Hosts split into four rough camps. Each has a different ideal customer, margin profile, and reason to care about an AI website builder.
Volume plays on thin margins
Sells $2–$10/month shared hosting to millions of SMBs, solopreneurs, and hobbyists. Brand-led, heavy paid marketing, low churn resistance. WordPress is the most common workload. Examples: Bluehost, HostGator, Hostinger, Namecheap, IONOS.
Premium WordPress-specialist brands
Sells $25–$300/month WordPress hosting to agencies, freelancers, and serious SMBs. Developer-friendly, performance-focused, better support. Smaller but higher-margin. Examples: WP Engine, Kinsta, Pressable, Flywheel, Pantheon.
cPanel / Plesk resellers & regional hosts
Sells $5–$50/month cPanel or Plesk hosting, often regional. Very technical customer base (agencies, IT shops, resellers). Tend to think of themselves as infrastructure providers. Examples: A2 Hosting, InMotion, GreenGeeks, regional hosts in every country.
Raw infrastructure players
Sells cloud VMs and bare metal. Developer-first, API-driven, usage-based billing. WordPress is one workload among many. Examples: DigitalOcean, Linode (Akamai), Vultr, OVHcloud, Hetzner, AWS Lightsail.
| Company | Archetype | Control panel | Notable |
|---|---|---|---|
| GoDaddy | Commodity + Managed WP | Custom UI + cPanel (legacy) | Public (NYSE: GDDY); largest domain registrar; >20M customers |
| Hostinger | Commodity | hPanel (proprietary) | Lithuania-based; runs Hostinger Horizons, a competing AI website builder |
| Newfold Digital | Commodity (holding co.) | cPanel | Formed 2021 (EIG + Web.com merger); owns Bluehost, HostGator, Network Solutions, Domain.com, iPage |
| IONOS (1&1) | Commodity | Custom UI + Plesk (VPS) | Public since Feb 2023 (ETR: IOS); majority owned by United Internet AG |
| SiteGround | Panel-centric (premium) | Site Tools (proprietary) | Moved off cPanel in 2020; infrastructure runs on Google Cloud |
| Namecheap | Commodity | cPanel | Registrar-led, value positioning |
| A2 Hosting | Panel-centric | cPanel | Developer-friendly, speed claims |
| WP Engine | Managed WordPress | Custom UI (User Portal) | Silver Lake majority-owned (2018); owns Flywheel, Delicious Brains, ACF; Sept 2024 public dispute with Automattic / Matt Mullenweg |
| Kinsta | Managed WordPress | Custom UI (MyKinsta) | Runs on Google Cloud premium tier; Hungary-founded |
| DreamHost | Panel-centric | Custom UI (DreamHost Panel) — no cPanel | Employee-owned; WordPress.org recommended host |
| Akamai Cloud (Linode) | Hyperscaler / IaaS | Custom UI (Cloud Manager) | Linode acquired by Akamai in 2022; rebranded Akamai Cloud Computing |
| DigitalOcean | Hyperscaler | Custom UI + Cloudways (acquired 2022) | Cloudways adds managed WP layer on top of DO/AWS/GCP/Linode droplets |
| OVHcloud | Hyperscaler + Commodity | Custom UI + Plesk/cPanel options | Public (Euronext: OVH); Europe’s largest cloud provider |
The industry has consolidated heavily. Newfold Digital (formed 2021 from the EIG + Web.com merger; brands include Bluehost, HostGator, Network Solutions, iPage) and GoDaddy each run many brands on shared back-end infrastructure. WP Engine (majority owned by Silver Lake since 2018) owns Flywheel, Delicious Brains, and Advanced Custom Fields. Akamai acquired Linode in 2022 and rebranded it Akamai Cloud Computing. DigitalOcean acquired Cloudways in 2022. When you talk to a “hosting company” it is often one of 10–15 parent companies wearing a brand hat. Ask who owns them; it changes who the real decision-maker is.
Hosting types
Six product categories cover >95% of the market. Every host offers some subset of these. Knowing the category tells you the customer archetype, price point, and level of technical sophistication of the end user.
If someone on a call asks “what’s the difference between shared and VPS?” — use this table. One row per type, plain English, focused on the decisions a customer or sales rep actually cares about.
| Type | What it is, in one sentence | Resources (CPU / RAM / disk) | Who manages the server | Best for | Monthly price | Tech know-how needed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shared | Many customers run their websites on the same server and share its resources. | Shared — capped per account; a busy neighbour can slow others down | Host manages everything; customer only touches their own sites | First-time site owners, bloggers, small local businesses, side projects | $2–$15 | Very low — one-click installers do most of the work |
| VPS | A virtual slice of a physical server with its own OS and guaranteed resources. | Guaranteed — e.g. 2 vCPU / 4 GB RAM / 80 GB SSD reserved for the customer | Customer has full admin (root) access; if “unmanaged” they handle OS/patching themselves | Developers, agencies running multiple client sites, growing SMBs | $5–$100 | Medium — command-line comfort unless the VPS is “managed” |
| Dedicated | An entire physical server rented by a single customer. | 100% of one machine — all CPU cores, all RAM, all disks | Customer (or their IT team) owns the full stack | Large publishers, enterprise e-commerce, regulated industries (finance, healthcare) | $80–$500+ | High — dedicated IT or server admin typically required |
| Cloud (IaaS) | Virtual servers provisioned on demand from a pool of hardware, billed by usage. | Elastic — pick any size, resize any time, pay only while running | Customer builds and maintains their own stack (nothing preinstalled) | Developers, startups, DevOps teams, apps with unpredictable traffic | $5 – thousands | High — Linux, scripting, and networking knowledge |
| Managed WordPress | Hosting tuned only for WordPress, with the host handling all the operations work. | Per plan — usually sold by site count or monthly visits, not raw CPU/RAM | Host handles caching, updates, backups, security, staging, SSL — customer only edits the site | Agencies, freelancers, SMBs with budget, content brands, WooCommerce stores | $20–$300 | Low — works out of the box |
| Reseller | One hosting account that the buyer can split into many smaller accounts and resell under their own brand. | One shared pool — the reseller divides disk, bandwidth, and account slots among their clients | Upstream host manages the server; reseller manages their clients | Web design agencies, freelance devs, IT consultants who want to own the billing relationship | $20–$100 | Medium — needs to understand WHM + billing basics |
A virtualized slice of a physical server — the customer gets root access, guaranteed resources, and their own OS. Sold in the $5–$100/month range.
Developers, agencies hosting client sites, growing SMBs that outgrew shared, technical teams who want control. Two flavours: unmanaged (you get a blank Linux box) and managed (host pre-installs cPanel/Plesk and handles updates).
- Virtualization: KVM (modern), OpenVZ or Virtuozzo (legacy)
- Resources: Typically 1–8 vCPUs, 1–32 GB RAM, 20–200 GB SSD
- Panel: Often WHM/cPanel or Plesk on managed tiers; nothing on unmanaged
A physical, single-tenant server. No virtualization overhead. $80–$500+/month.
Larger e-commerce sites, high-traffic publishers, compliance-heavy workloads, companies hosting many client sites. Declining in the mainstream as cloud absorbs the use cases, but still significant in enterprise and regulated verticals.
Virtualized resources pooled across many physical servers. Elastic scaling, usage-based billing, API-driven provisioning. Ranges from $5/month droplets to thousands/month enterprise setups.
- IaaS cloud — raw VMs. AWS EC2, DigitalOcean Droplets, Linode, Vultr, Hetzner. Developer-owned.
- Managed cloud — cloud infrastructure + management layer. Cloudways, WP Engine, Kinsta, Pantheon. Customer gets the ease of managed hosting with cloud economics.
Hosting optimised and locked down specifically for WordPress. Host handles caching, security, updates, backups, staging environments. $20–$300/month for SMB tiers, enterprise goes into thousands.
- No cPanel. Typically a custom customer portal (MyKinsta, WP Engine User Portal, SiteGround Site Tools).
- Opinionated stack: NGINX, PHP-FPM, Redis, specific plugin blocklists, WordPress-tuned MySQL.
- Built-in features: staging, automatic daily backups, CDN, Let’s Encrypt SSL, malware scanning.
- Developer workflows: Git push-to-deploy, WP-CLI, SSH, SFTP.
Agencies, freelancers, SMBs with real budgets, content publishers, e-commerce stores on WooCommerce. They trade control for operational ease.
A hosting account that can be subdivided and resold. The reseller gets WHM (the cPanel admin interface) and creates individual cPanel accounts for their own customers, typically under their own brand. $20–$100/month.
Web design agencies, freelance developers, small hosting startups, IT consultants. They want to sell hosting to their clients without owning infrastructure.
| Type | Typical price | Customer | Technical level | Control panel | 10Web fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shared | $2–$15/mo | SMBs, hobbyists | Low | cPanel / Plesk / custom | Primary |
| VPS | $5–$100/mo | Devs, agencies | Medium | Optional (WHM / Plesk) | Secondary |
| Dedicated | $80–$500+/mo | Enterprise, high-traffic | High | Optional | Indirect |
| Cloud (IaaS) | $5–$$$/mo | Developers | High | None by default | Indirect |
| Managed WordPress | $20–$300/mo | Agencies, serious SMBs | Medium | Custom portal | Primary |
| Reseller | $20–$100/mo | Agencies, IT shops | Medium–High | WHM + cPanel | Secondary |
Control panels deep dive
Control panels are the graphical interface on top of a Linux server. They let non-technical users create websites, manage email, databases, DNS, and files — without touching a command line. They are the single most important piece of hosting infrastructure to understand.
The panel’s job is to translate clicks in the browser into configuration changes, installs, and shell commands on the underlying server. It is what the end user actually sees.
Every control panel ecosystem has (at minimum) two interfaces: one for the end customer who bought hosting, and one for the hosting provider’s admin who manages all accounts on the server.
“cPanel” / “Plesk customer”
What the buyer sees after signup. Scoped to their single account. Can install WordPress, create email addresses, upload files, see bandwidth usage.
“WHM” / “Plesk admin”
What the hosting provider or reseller uses. Lists all accounts on the server. Can create / suspend / delete accounts, install server-wide software, patch the OS.
The five control panels you need to know
The overwhelmingly dominant control panel in Linux hosting. Owned by cPanel L.L.C., now under WebPros (which also owns WHMCS and Plesk — note that). Per-account pricing since 2019 caused controversy and drove some hosts to alternatives, but it remains the default.
Representative layout — real cPanel shows 40+ tiles. Live reference →
A dashboard of “tiles” grouped into categories: Files, Databases, Domains, Email, Metrics, Security, Software, Advanced. Most end users only ever click a handful: File Manager, Softaculous (WordPress installer), email accounts, and phpMyAdmin.
- Account management: create, modify, suspend, terminate cPanel accounts
- Package management: plans with resource limits (disk, bandwidth, email accounts)
- Server configuration: Apache, PHP versions, MySQL, DNS, mail
- Reseller setup: create resellers, give them a subset of accounts
- UAPI / cPanel API 2 — end-user scoped actions (create database, install plugin, etc.)
- WHM API 1 — admin actions (create account, manage packages)
- Auto-installers hook into these APIs to deploy WordPress in one click
The #2 control panel globally, and #1 in several regions (Germany, Eastern Europe, Russia, parts of Asia). Also owned by WebPros. Runs on both Linux and Windows Server — the only mainstream panel that does Windows well, which makes it the panel of choice for .NET/ASP hosting.
Representative layout — Plesk’s Obsidian theme. Live demo →
- Single interface for both end users and admins (role-based views rather than separate products).
- Modern UI — widely considered cleaner than cPanel’s.
- WordPress Toolkit was originally a Plesk product — it’s deeper and more mature than the cPanel port.
- Extensions marketplace — rich third-party plugin ecosystem.
A lightweight, lower-cost alternative to cPanel. Huge momentum in the last few years as hosts flee cPanel’s pricing changes. Strong in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. Licensing is flat-rate per server, which is attractive at scale.
Representative layout — DirectAdmin’s Evolution skin. Live reference →
Budget-conscious hosts, regional providers, resellers who want better margins. Think mid-tier brands in Asia and Europe rather than the global giants.
- Three role levels: Admin, Reseller, User
- CustomBuild — scripting system for configuring server stack (Apache vs NGINX vs OpenLiteSpeed, PHP versions, etc.)
- Has its own WordPress installer and compatibility with Softaculous/Installatron
An open-source panel built around OpenLiteSpeed, a high-performance web server. Free in its open-source edition; paid CyberPanel Enterprise adds enterprise LiteSpeed and support.
Popular with hosts who market performance heavily and with DIY VPS owners. Not a “big four” panel but increasingly common, especially in WordPress hosting startups.
Representative layout — CyberPanel Enterprise dashboard. Live reference →
Larger hosts increasingly build their own control panel, wrapping hosting infrastructure with a branded UX that matches their marketing. This is a strategic move: cPanel is commoditizing, so hosts use UI as a moat.
Representative layout — archetype for modern host panels. Hostinger hPanel · MyKinsta · SiteGround Site Tools
- Hostinger hPanel — replaced cPanel across their entire shared hosting range
- SiteGround Site Tools — replaced cPanel in 2020
- GoDaddy — custom dashboard for their Managed WordPress and “Websites + Marketing” products
- WP Engine User Portal — purpose-built for managed WordPress
- MyKinsta — fully custom, Google Cloud-backed
- DreamHost panel — one of the oldest custom panels in the industry
All three can install WordPress in one click, but they sit in very different places in the stack and solve different problems. On every Approach 3 conversation, the first question is which one the host uses — because that determines exactly how our license plugin ships with every new WordPress install.
WordPress Toolkit
A WordPress-only management suite made by WebPros (the vendor that owns cPanel and Plesk). Installs WordPress, but also clones, stages, mass-updates plugins/themes, runs rollbacks, hardens security, and pushes staging → production.
Softaculous
A third-party auto-installer made by Softaculous Ltd. Installs 400+ web applications — WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, Moodle, and so on. Goal is breadth, not WordPress depth. The dominant auto-installer in the industry.
Installatron
Smaller competitor to Softaculous from Installatron LLC. Same concept — one-click installs of hundreds of web apps. Feature-set is comparable; market share is much smaller.
| Capability | WordPress Toolkit | Softaculous | Installatron |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vendor | WebPros (cPanel / Plesk) | Softaculous Ltd | Installatron LLC |
| Scope | WordPress only | 400+ web apps | 250+ web apps |
| Panels it ships with | cPanel, Plesk (native) | cPanel, DirectAdmin, Plesk, InterWorx, CyberPanel | cPanel, DirectAdmin, Plesk |
| Install WordPress | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Clone & staging | Deep (push staging ↔ prod) | Basic clone | Basic clone |
| Mass updates across every site | Yes | Limited | Limited |
| Security hardening templates | Yes | No | No |
| Plugin-bundling hook (Approach 3) | Plugin Sets | Default Plugins & Themes | Preset plugins |
| Typical home | Classic cPanel/Plesk hosts (GoDaddy, Newfold brands, A2, Namecheap) | Shared hosting, DirectAdmin, CyberPanel, regional hosts | Smaller hosts that prefer the Installatron UX |
Approach 3 means: every time the host provisions a new WordPress install, our license plugin is already there, pre-activated, tied to the customer’s hosting account. We don’t own the install flow — the panel’s installer does — so we need to be listed in whichever bundling mechanism the panel uses. The three mechanisms look almost identical in concept, and all three are one-time admin configuration steps on the host’s side.
Plugin Sets
In the panel admin, the host creates a Plugin Set called e.g. “10Web default” that contains our license plugin (and optionally our theme). They mark it as the default set. From that moment, every WordPress install started through WP Toolkit — by their end users or by automation — includes the 10Web plugin, already activated.
Default Plugins & Themes
Softaculous has a feature at the admin level where the host lists plugins that should be pre-added to every WordPress install. The host drops our plugin slug (or zip) into that list. Every user who clicks “Install WordPress” in Softaculous from then on gets our plugin bundled and activated — same outcome as the WP Toolkit path, different screen.
Preset plugins (install profile)
Installatron calls the same concept a preset or install profile. The host edits the WordPress install profile to include our plugin by slug or upload. From then on, every WordPress install through Installatron carries our plugin pre-installed and activated.
Billing & provisioning platforms
The control panel is where hosting is operated. The billing platform is where hosting is sold. Together they form the two halves of every hosting business — and the integration between them is the part that matters most for our conversations.
When a customer clicks “buy” on the hosting company’s website, the billing platform takes payment, then calls the control panel’s API to provision an account on a physical server. The customer gets an email with their cPanel login. All three systems stay in sync for renewals, suspensions, and cancellations.
The four billing platforms you need to know
The overwhelmingly dominant billing & client management platform for web hosts. Owned by WebPros — same parent as cPanel and Plesk. So when you hear a host say “cPanel + WHMCS,” they are running the same company’s stack top to bottom.
Representative layout — WHMCS admin area. Product screenshots → · live demo →
- Client portal (login, invoices, tickets)
- Storefront / cart / checkout
- Recurring billing with dozens of payment gateways
- Domain registration orchestration (via registrar modules)
- Automated provisioning — the star feature. Pre-built modules for cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin, and 100+ other products.
- Support desk, affiliate program, automation rules
WHMCS ships provisioning modules — PHP classes that know how to create/suspend/terminate accounts on a specific control panel. The admin adds a “Server” to WHMCS (IP, API credentials), assigns products to that server, and when an order is paid WHMCS calls the panel’s API to provision. All automatic.
A leaner, more developer-friendly alternative to WHMCS. Source-available, MVC architecture, stronger security reputation. Smaller market share but loyal community.
Same conceptual model as WHMCS: clients, orders, invoices, modules for cPanel / Plesk / etc. Hosts running Blesta tend to be more technical and more willing to customize.
Product site: blesta.com · Docs: docs.blesta.com
Closed-source competitor to WHMCS with a particularly rich set of provisioning modules — VPS, cloud VM, domain, SSL, SMS, VoIP, etc. Popular with hosts that sell a wide product range beyond plain shared hosting.
Product site: hostbillapp.com
At sufficient scale, hosts build their own billing and customer portal instead of using WHMCS. This is standard for the largest brands: GoDaddy, Hostinger, Newfold brands, IONOS, OVHcloud, WP Engine, Kinsta, SiteGround. These are effectively bespoke SaaS platforms.
- The login, signup, and checkout all live on the same domain as the marketing site
- The customer portal has custom branding throughout — no WHMCS fingerprints
- Payment, invoices, product management all feel “native”
How the stack fits together
This is the section to re-read. Every partner conversation comes back to which components they run, which one the customer logs into first, and where 10Web slots in. Four stack archetypes cover almost everything you will see.
Three layers across every hosting product:
Billing / customer portal
Where the customer signs up, pays, opens tickets, sees invoices. WHMCS, Blesta, HostBill, or a custom UI.
Control panel
Where the customer manages their server slice. cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin, or a custom panel.
WordPress (+ builder)
The actual website the customer is building. Where the 10Web license plugin & theme live.
Before you pick an integration approach, ask one question: who sees the panel? This is the exact same split the partner integration guide opens with — the three “platform types.” Master these three labels and you can route any conversation in the first two minutes.
Hosting panel as frontend & backend
Customers log into cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin, CyberPanel, or similar directly. The panel is the customer dashboard. Classic shared / reseller hosts do this — A2 Hosting, InMotion, Namecheap shared, most regional hosts.
Hosting panel as backend only
Customers see the host’s custom dashboard — the panel runs behind it. Behind the scenes the host’s UI calls WHM API / UAPI (or their own backend) to provision accounts. Hostinger, SiteGround, GoDaddy, and most custom-panel brands run this way.
Fully custom platform
No hosting panel at all — the host built the entire stack themselves. Custom UI, custom backend, often Kubernetes or container-based infrastructure. WP Engine, Kinsta, and other managed-WordPress brands run this way.
Four stack archetypes
| Archetype | Approach 1 “I will capture the prompt in my UI” | Approach 2 “I will redirect users to the website generation workflow” | Approach 3 “I am using a hosting panel with WordPress management” |
|---|---|---|---|
| A · Classic WHMCS + cPanel | ✓ works | ✓ works | ✓ best fit |
| B · Custom UI + cPanel back-end | ✓ best fit | ✓ works | — bypasses custom UI |
| C · Fully custom (managed WP) | ✓ best fit | ✓ works | — no panel |
| D · Reseller | ✓ works | ✓ works | ✓ best fit |
Glossary & external resources
Skim this list and bookmark it. The glossary gets you past jargon on a call; the resources give you places to send prospects for deeper reading.
Glossary
Every complex term elsewhere in this document links here. Each entry also links to an authoritative external source.
- Apache
- The incumbent web server on Linux hosting. Reads files and returns them to browsers. httpd.apache.org →
- Application Password
- A WordPress-native way to authenticate REST API requests without the user’s real password. Built in since WP 5.6. WP docs →
- ARPU
- Average Revenue Per User — how much a hosting company makes per customer per month.
- Auto-installer
- Software like Softaculous or Installatron that installs web apps (WordPress, Joomla, etc.) with one click from inside a control panel.
- Bare metal
- Physical, single-tenant server — no virtualization.
- CDN
- Content Delivery Network — globally distributed cache servers that speed up content delivery. Common in managed WP (Cloudflare, Bunny, KeyCDN). Cloudflare explainer →
- CloudLinux
- A Linux distribution that enforces per-user resource limits on shared hosting servers. Almost universal on cPanel. cloudlinux.com →
- cPanel
- The dominant Linux hosting control panel. End-user view of the cPanel product family. cpanel.net →
- Dashboard
- Generic term for “the customer’s logged-in area.” In hosting this usually means the billing portal or control panel.
- DNS
- Domain Name System — translates names like example.com into IP addresses. Managed in the control panel. Cloudflare explainer →
- Git push-to-deploy
- Workflow where pushing code to a Git branch triggers an automatic deployment to the hosting environment. Common in managed WP. WP Engine example →
- Gutenberg
- WordPress’s block-based editor, the default content editing experience since 2018.
- IaaS
- Infrastructure as a Service — raw VMs from AWS, DigitalOcean, Linode, etc.
- Installatron
- Third-party auto-installer, competitor to Softaculous. installatron.com →
- KVM
- Kernel-based Virtual Machine — the modern Linux virtualization technology used by most VPS providers. linux-kvm.org →
- Let’s Encrypt
- Free SSL certificate authority. Virtually every host provides auto-renewing Let’s Encrypt SSL. letsencrypt.org →
- Linux
- Open-source operating system running almost all web hosting. Common distributions: CentOS (deprecated), AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, Ubuntu, Debian. Overview →
- LiteSpeed
- A high-performance web server, commercial alternative to Apache. OpenLiteSpeed is the open-source version. litespeedtech.com →
- LVE
- Lightweight Virtual Environment — CloudLinux’s mechanism for capping per-user CPU/memory on shared hosts.
- Managed hosting
- Hosting where the provider handles OS updates, security, backups, and often optimization, so the customer can focus on their app.
- MySQL / MariaDB
- Relational databases that WordPress runs on. MariaDB is an open-source MySQL fork; either works. mariadb.org →
- Nameserver
- The DNS server a domain is pointed at. Changing nameservers is how a domain is “connected” to a host.
- NGINX
- Web server — usually positioned as faster and more modern than Apache. Common in managed WordPress stacks. nginx.org →
- OpenVZ / Virtuozzo
- Older container-based virtualization found on some budget VPS offerings. KVM has largely replaced it. openvz.org →
- PHP-FPM
- FastCGI Process Manager — how PHP runs behind NGINX or modern Apache. Performance-tunable. PHP docs →
- Plesk
- Second-largest control panel. Runs on Linux and Windows. Same parent company as cPanel (WebPros). plesk.com →
- Provisioning
- The automated process of creating a customer’s hosting account after payment.
- Redis
- In-memory key-value store often used to cache database queries and objects. Common in managed WP stacks. redis.io →
- Reseller
- A customer who buys a “reseller hosting” package and resells sliced-up accounts to their own customers.
- SFTP
- SSH File Transfer Protocol — secure way to upload/download files to a server. Replaces plain FTP. SSH.com explainer →
- Softaculous
- The dominant auto-installer. Ships with most cPanel/DirectAdmin installs. softaculous.com →
- SSH
- Secure Shell — command-line access to a server. Typically available on VPS and managed WP, rarely on shared. SSH.com overview →
- Staging
- A cloned copy of a site used to test changes before going live. A standard feature of managed WP.
- VPS
- Virtual Private Server — a virtualized slice of a physical server with guaranteed resources and root access.
- WebPros
- Private-equity-owned parent company of cPanel, Plesk, and WHMCS. The most important corporate entity in the control-panel world. webpros.com →
- WHM
- WebHost Manager — the admin-level interface of cPanel. Used by hosting providers and resellers to manage accounts. cpanel.net/whm →
- WHMCS
- The dominant billing & client management platform for web hosts. Owned by WebPros. whmcs.com →
- WordPress Toolkit
- A product (Plesk-first, now also on cPanel) that manages WordPress installs inside the control panel. Our Approach 3 integration point. plesk.com/wordpress-toolkit →
- WP-CLI
- WordPress Command Line Interface — the developer’s tool for managing WordPress from SSH. wp-cli.org →