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Cloud hosting terminology glossary: 40 terms explained (2026)

Some prices quoted in this guide are out of date. It is being rebuilt on our price index; for current prices use the comparison pages, which show when each price was checked.

Cloud hosting pricing pages use enough jargon that a first-time buyer legitimately can't tell what they're paying for. This glossary explains every term you need to read a spec sheet or comparison table and know what the numbers mean.

Alphabetical. Useful as a reference. Cross-linked to deeper explainers where they exist on StackRates.

AUP (Acceptable Use Policy)

The provider's terms that define what "unmetered" or "unlimited" actually means. Any provider that advertises unmetered bandwidth uses their AUP to throttle sustained heavy usage. Always read.

ARM64 vs x86_64

Two CPU architectures. Most cloud VPS providers offer both. ARM64 (via AWS Graviton, Ampere Altra) is often 20-30% cheaper for equivalent throughput but requires ARM-compatible builds of your software. x86_64 is the historical default and the safe choice unless you're specifically optimising cost.

Bandwidth (or transfer, or egress)

Data sent out from your server to the internet per month. Almost every plan includes a quota; overage is billed per GB. Ingress (inbound) is almost always free. See What "unmetered bandwidth" actually means.

Block storage

Virtual disk you attach to a VM. Persists independently of the VM, so you can detach and reattach to another VM. Priced per GB-month (typically $0.05-0.10/GB).

Cloud VPS

Marketing term. Usually just means a VPS with API-driven provisioning and quick resize. See VPS vs cloud vs shared.

Container

Lightweight OS-level virtualisation. Docker containers are the common example. Multiple containers run on one host OS. Fast to start, lower overhead than VMs.

CPU-Optimized

A plan tier where the ratio of vCPU to RAM is heavier on vCPU (typical: 1:2). For workloads where compute is the bottleneck.

Datacenter region

The physical location of the datacenter your VM runs in. Latency to your users depends on proximity. See our provider guides for region counts.

Dedicated (as in "dedicated vCPU")

You get 1 hardware thread all to yourself, no oversubscription. Premium tier. Contrast with "shared vCPU" where you compete with neighbours.

Droplet

DigitalOcean's name for a VM instance. Marketing term. Just a VM.

Egress

Data flowing OUT of your server. What providers meter for bandwidth. See "bandwidth".

Failover

Automatic redirection of traffic from a failed instance to a healthy standby. Managed databases usually offer this. Self-managed setups build it themselves.

FastCGI cache

An Nginx feature that caches whole PHP responses. Speeds up WordPress considerably. Free to configure on any VPS.

HDD

Spinning-platter disk. Slow. Almost no modern cloud VPS uses HDD.

Hyper-Threading (Intel) / SMT (AMD)

The technology that lets one CPU core present as two hardware threads. Cloud vCPUs usually map 1:1 to a hardware thread. See vCPU vs CPU explained.

Instance

A running VM. AWS's term; also used generically.

IPv4 / IPv6

Internet address protocols. IPv4 addresses are scarce and often billed extra beyond the one included in a plan. IPv6 is essentially free.

KVM

The Linux kernel's virtualisation technology. Most cloud VPS providers use KVM under the hood. You don't need to think about this.

Latency

Round-trip time for a network request. Measured in milliseconds. Under 30ms feels instant; over 200ms feels slow.

Load balancer

A service that distributes incoming requests across multiple backend instances. Usually $10-30/mo on major cloud providers. Not needed for single-instance apps.

Managed database

A database service the provider operates for you (backups, failover, updates, monitoring). Typically 3-10x the cost of self-hosted on the same VM.

Managed hosting

Hosting where the provider operates the server and stack for you. WordPress managed hosting = Cloudways, Kinsta, WP Engine. See What is managed WordPress hosting.

Nanode

Linode's name for their 1 vCPU / 1 GB tier. Marketing term.

NVMe

A specific SSD interface protocol that's much faster than SATA SSD. Most modern cloud VPS storage is NVMe.

Object storage

S3-compatible file storage. Not attached to a specific VM. Priced per GB-month plus per-request. Examples: AWS S3, DO Spaces, Backblaze B2, Cloudflare R2.

OS-level virtualisation

Lightweight containerisation (Docker, LXC) as opposed to full VM virtualisation. Faster and lower overhead but less isolation.

Oversubscription

Providers put more vCPUs on a host than there are physical hardware threads. Works because most workloads are idle. Contabo has the highest oversubscription ratio; Hetzner CCX has none.

Page cache

Storing rendered HTML so subsequent visitors get pre-rendered pages without executing PHP. Massive perf win for WordPress. Implemented via Varnish, Nginx FastCGI cache, or a CDN.

PoP (Point of Presence)

An edge location where a CDN caches content close to users. Cloudflare has ~330 PoPs; that's what makes it fast.

Prerendering

Generating static HTML at build time so crawlers see the full page without executing JavaScript. StackRates itself uses this pattern for its comparison pages.

Reserved instance

A discounted long-term commitment (1 or 3 years). Saves 10-25% typically. Usually not worth committing to on a first purchase.

S3-compatible

Any object storage API that matches Amazon S3's interface. Lets you swap S3 for a cheaper alternative like Backblaze B2 without app changes.

SLA (Service-Level Agreement)

The uptime the provider commits to. 99.99% is standard. Enforcement (credits, refunds) varies. Almost never fully honoured for small customers.

Snapshot

Point-in-time copy of a VM's disk. Cheaper than a full backup, faster to restore. Priced per GB-month.

Spot instance

A VM you can be evicted from at short notice, priced 40-90% cheaper than on-demand. AWS invented the pattern. Useful for fault-tolerant batch workloads only.

Standby

A hot-replica of your database that can take over on primary failure. Managed database HA. Usually 50% surcharge.

TTFB (Time To First Byte)

How long from the request until the first byte of response. Cache hits: 50-200ms. Cache misses: 500ms-3s depending on backend. Meaningful CTR / SEO signal.

Unmanaged

You get root; you're the sysadmin. Every plain VPS is unmanaged.

Unmetered

Not billed per gigabyte. Often port-limited or throttled anyway. Read the AUP. See What unmetered bandwidth actually means.

vCPU (Virtual CPU)

A virtualised presentation of one hardware thread. Not the same as a physical CPU core. See vCPU vs CPU explained.

VM (Virtual Machine)

A virtualised computer with its own OS. What "VPS" and "cloud instance" both mean.

VPS (Virtual Private Server)

A VM you rent from a hosting provider. See VPS vs cloud vs shared.

WAF (Web Application Firewall)

Firewall that inspects HTTP requests and blocks known attack patterns. Often bundled with CDN (Cloudflare's WAF is on the free tier).

WordPress-optimized

Marketing term. Usually means Nginx + PHP-FPM + a page cache (Varnish or FastCGI) + Redis object cache, tuned for WordPress query patterns. Real value on managed hosting; less on shared hosting.

WSGI (Python), Rack (Ruby), ASGI (Python async)

Web-server-to-application interfaces for their respective languages. You configure them once and forget. Common: gunicorn (WSGI), Puma (Rack), uvicorn (ASGI).

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