Hosting Glossary
What is Let's Encrypt?
Let's Encrypt in plain English — the definition, the analogy, and why it matters to anyone who runs a website.
The short answer
Let's Encrypt is the free, automated certificate authority that made HTTPS universal — issuing short-lived certificates renewed entirely by machinery.
Below: the fuller explanation, an analogy that makes it stick, why it matters in practice, and where you'll actually meet it.
Written by the HostingAlly team · Last revised 27 July 2026
100+
Terms in this glossary
2 min
Average read
Plain
English, promised
24/7
Humans if you're stuck
Its ACME protocol lets servers prove domain control and receive certificates without humans — the automation that collapsed SSL's cost to zero and its admin to none. Ninety-day lifetimes force the automation to stay healthy.
It's the engine behind most hosts' 'free SSL' (ours included) — browser-trusted certificates indistinguishable in security from paid DV.
A picture that makes Let's Encrypt stick
A robotic passport office issuing free, short-validity credentials to anyone who can prove their identity on the spot — no queues, no fees, renewals handled by the applicants' own machinery.
Hold onto that picture and most of the documentation you'll ever read about it becomes considerably less mysterious.
The practical stakes
It's why SSL stopped being a purchasing decision — encryption became infrastructure hygiene, and any host still charging for basic certificates is billing for a solved problem.
You don't need to operate this layer daily — you need to recognise it when it's the explanation for something, which is exactly when this page pays for itself.
Let's Encrypt in the wild
A new domain pointed at our hosting has a trusted certificate within minutes — issued, installed and scheduled for mechanical renewal without anyone clicking anything.
Multiply that example across every site on the internet and you have the concept's entire job description.
Where you'll meet it on our platform
You'll meet it in the control panel and occasionally in a support conversation — usually already configured the right way. If this term made sense, the natural next reads are SSL Certificate, HTTPS, TLS and Wildcard SSL.
Every plan includes free SSL that renews itself, so the padlock is never your job.
Jargon is a service failure
Every confusing term in hosting eventually becomes a support ticket — so we defined the hundred most common ones properly, once, in the plain English we'd use on the phone.
Renewal prices match signup prices, so the year-two invoice is the most boring email you'll get from us.
- 100+ terms, plain English
- Analogies and real examples
- Cross-linked related concepts
- Written by the support desk
Why HostingAlly
Every plan includes this, whatever you pay
Linked, not siloed
Related terms cross-reference, so one lookup becomes a working understanding.
Grounded in a real platform
Examples reference the hosting you'd actually use, not abstract diagrams.
One term, fully landed
Let's Encrypt defined, pictured by analogy and placed in your own control panel — recognise-level in a single read.
Analogies that stick
Each concept gets a picture you'll remember at the moment you actually need it.
Plain English first
Every term defined for site owners, not for other sysadmins — jargon translated, not restated.
The practical stakes named
Not just what it is — when it's the answer to a problem you're having.
Getting Started
How to get going
- 1
Spot it in your own setup
Open your control panel and find where this concept lives — seeing it attached to your own site is what converts definition into understanding.
- 2
Check the defaults
Our platform ships sane defaults for this — verify rather than assume, and you'll know your setup instead of hoping about it.
- 3
Follow the related terms
Concepts travel in packs — SSL Certificate, HTTPS and TLS complete this one's picture, and each is a two-minute read away.
Included
What's covered on our plans
- Webmail plus IMAP, POP and SMTP access
- Per-site PHP version selection
- Free website migration handled by our team
- Upgrades apply in place — no migrations between plans
- NVMe SSD storage as standard
- Email accounts on your own domain
- Free WebP image optimisation built in
- One-click installer for WordPress and 400+ apps
- Free domain for the first year on annual plans
- 30-day money-back guarantee on hosting plans
FAQ
Your questions, answered
Is a free Let's Encrypt certificate weaker than a paid one?
Cryptographically identical — same encryption, same browser trust. Paid certificates differ in validation depth (OV/EV), warranties and wildcard logistics — procurement features, not stronger padlocks.
Why do the certificates expire every 90 days?
Deliberate design — short lifetimes limit stolen-certificate damage and force renewal automation to exist and stay tested. On managed hosting the cycle is invisible; that invisibility is the system working.
Is there a money-back guarantee?
Yes — try the hosting properly and if it doesn't fit, the refund process is a request, not a retention gauntlet. Domain registrations are the one standard carve-out, since registries make those non-refundable the moment they're placed.
Do you monitor uptime, and what do you commit to?
We commit to 99.9% uptime and monitor continuously — not a marketing number but an operational one, with alerting that usually has us fixing issues before customers notice them.
Do prices go up at renewal?
No — the price you sign up at is the price you renew at. We don't run teaser-rate economics, so there's no year-two ambush to plan around, and your bookkeeping can rely on the number staying put.
Where are your servers located?
Our hosting infrastructure runs from European datacentres with London at the core, behind server-level caching that keeps cached pages fast worldwide. For most sites, platform quality — NVMe storage, LiteSpeed, sensible server density — matters far more than the datacentre's postcode.
Do you support staging sites?
Yes — plans with staging let you clone the live site, test changes safely, and push to production when ready. It's the difference between 'I hope this update works' and knowing it does.
Keep exploring
SSL Certificate
An SSL certificate is the credential that enables encrypted HTTPS connections and vouches that the server holds the domain it claims.
HTTPS
HTTPS is HTTP over an encrypted connection — the web's standard transport, protecting everything between browser and server from reading or tampering.
Web Hosting
NVMe cPanel hosting with free SSL, migration and a free first-year domain.
WordPress Hosting
Managed WordPress with LiteSpeed caching, staging and automatic backups.
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