iFastHostingWhat you get with your hosting plan
Every hosting plan bundles the same handful of things together. Here is what each one is actually for.
A hosting plan is not one thing — it is a bundle of several things sold together, and the welcome email lists them without explaining what any of them are for. If you have just signed up and are wondering what you actually bought, this is what is in the box.
A control panel
This is where you manage everything: files, email, databases, domains, SSL and PHP settings. Your account signs you into a control panel called StackCP, reached from a button in your client area rather than a separate address to remember. A tour of the control panel walks through every section if you want the full layout before you start clicking around.
The client area handles billing, support and renewals. The control panel handles the technical side. They are separate on purpose — see logging in to your hosting account if the two are getting confused.
Storage space
Every plan has a disk space allowance, which is the total room for your website files, your databases, your email and any backups the control panel keeps locally. It is shared across all of those rather than reserved separately for each. What is disk space and how much do you need covers how to tell if you are close to the limit.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the amount of data your site is allowed to transfer to visitors in a billing period — every page view, image and download counts. Most sites use a small fraction of their allowance; it only becomes a live concern for sites with heavy traffic or large downloadable files. See what is bandwidth and how much do you need for the detail.
Email addresses on your domain
A hosting plan lets you create mailboxes at your own domain — you@yourdomain.com rather than a personal address — and each plan has a limit on how many you can create and how much space each one gets. Setting the first one up is covered in setting up your first email address.
A free SSL certificate
Every site hosted with us gets a free SSL certificate, which is what turns http:// into https:// and shows the padlock in a browser's address bar. It is usually issued automatically once the domain is pointed at your hosting and needs no separate purchase or renewal on your part.
A domain name — sometimes
Whether a domain is bundled with your plan depends on what you ordered. Either way, a domain and hosting are two separate things that have to be connected before a website appears at that address — do you need both a domain and hosting explains the relationship, and adding a domain to your hosting account covers the actual steps.
An application installer
If you plan to run WordPress or a similar platform, the control panel includes a one-click installer rather than requiring you to upload the software by hand. Installing WordPress in one click covers that process from a fresh account.
A free migration, if you are moving to us
If you already have a website hosted elsewhere, a free migration is available to move it across rather than you rebuilding it by hand. This covers moving the site itself; it is worth reading through what the process involves before you start so nothing is a surprise partway through.
Keep your previous hosting active until the new site is confirmed working and your domain is fully pointed at it. Cancelling too soon is the single most common way a migration turns into an outage.
Support and a money-back guarantee
Every plan includes access to support through a ticket in the client area, and every new plan carries a 30-day money-back guarantee if it turns out not to be what you needed. Neither of those depends on which plan tier you chose.
What is not automatically included
A few things are easy to assume are bundled in and are not, depending on the plan:
- A dedicated IP address. Most shared plans share an IP address among several customers, which is normal and does not affect a working SSL certificate or a normally behaving site.
- Root or SSH-level server access. Shared hosting plans are managed at the control panel level rather than the operating system level. If you need that, a VPS is the right product rather than shared hosting.
- Unlimited resources. Plans described generously still have practical ceilings on things like simultaneous processes and database size — the numbers are shown in your control panel rather than in the marketing copy.
Where to check what your specific plan includes
Plan details vary by tier, and the exact allowances for your account are shown in two places: the welcome email sent when you signed up, and the resource summary inside your control panel. Those are more reliable than remembering what a sales page said, because they reflect the plan you are actually on today.
If anything in your control panel does not match what you believe you ordered, contact support and we can confirm exactly what is on your account.
Related reading
The main sections you will find in your control panel and roughly what lives in each one.
What is bandwidth and how much do I need?The total data your site sends to visitors each month. Most sites use far less of it than the number on the plan suggests.
What is disk space and how much do I need?The total storage on your hosting account, shared between your website files, database and email. Most sites need surprisingly little.
How to read your hosting welcome emailOne email holds nearly everything you need for your first weeks of hosting. Here is what each section actually means.