Hosting glossary

A pod is a dedicated Linux server that runs one app. It has its own CPU, memory, disk, IP address and HTTPS subdomain, and you get root SSH access to it. Unlike a shared function runtime, a pod stays running between requests, so background jobs and long-lived processes keep working.

Self-hosting means running software on a server you control instead of paying a vendor to run it for you. You install the app, own the data, and handle updates, backups and security yourself. The usual motivations are cost, data ownership, and not being repriced by a SaaS company.

Managed self-hosting means running open-source software on a server that is yours, while a platform handles provisioning, TLS certificates, updates and backups. You keep the data, the root access and the exit route. You skip the reverse proxy config, the certificate renewals and the 2am restart.

PaaS, or Platform as a Service, is hosting where you supply the code and the provider supplies everything under it: the operating system, the runtime, the web server and the deployment pipeline. You push a repository, the platform builds and runs it. Heroku, Railway, Render and InstaPods are all PaaS products.

Static site hosting serves pre-built HTML, CSS, JavaScript and image files exactly as they are, with no code running per request. A build step turns your source into a folder of files, and a web server returns them. It is the fastest and cheapest way to host a site, because nothing has to be computed while a visitor waits.

Self-hosting runs software on a server you control, so you own the data and the maintenance. Cloud SaaS runs the same category of software for you, so you own neither. The tradeoff is control and cost against convenience: self-hosting is cheaper per seat and more work, SaaS is instant and priced per user forever.

A reverse proxy is a server that sits in front of your application, accepts incoming requests, and passes them to the app behind it. It terminates HTTPS, routes by hostname or path, and can cache, compress and rate-limit. nginx, Caddy, Traefik and HAProxy are the common ones.

SSH access means you can open an encrypted shell session on your server and run commands on it directly. SSH, the Secure Shell protocol, authenticates with a key pair rather than a password. On a hosting platform, having SSH means you can inspect, fix and install things instead of filing a support ticket.

A cron job is a command scheduled to run automatically at fixed times, defined by a five-field expression such as `0 3 * * *` for 3am daily. The cron daemon has shipped with Unix systems since the 1970s and remains the standard way to run backups, imports, cleanups and report jobs on a Linux server.

Persistent storage is disk space that survives restarts, redeploys and crashes. Files written there are still present afterwards. The opposite is ephemeral storage, where the filesystem is recreated on every deploy, so uploads, SQLite databases and generated files silently disappear.

A wildcard SSL certificate secures every first-level subdomain of a domain with a single certificate, written as `*.example.com`. It covers app.example.com and api.example.com, but not deep.sub.example.com. Hosting platforms use wildcards so every customer subdomain is served over HTTPS without issuing a certificate per site.

Git push deploy means that pushing commits to a branch automatically builds and releases your app. The host watches the repository, receives a webhook on push, pulls the new commit, installs dependencies, runs the build, and restarts the process. Heroku popularised the pattern and nearly every app platform now offers it.

Vibe coding is building software by describing what you want to an AI model and accepting the code it produces, without reading every line. The developer steers in natural language and tests by running the thing. The term was coined by Andrej Karpathy in February 2025 and spread with tools like Claude Code, Cursor and Lovable.

An MCP server is a program that exposes tools, data and prompts to an AI assistant over the Model Context Protocol, an open standard Anthropic published in November 2024. The assistant discovers what the server can do and calls it, so one integration works across every MCP-capable client rather than being wired per app.

Flat-rate hosting charges a fixed price per server per month regardless of traffic. Usage-based hosting meters resources such as CPU seconds, memory-hours, bandwidth, build minutes and requests, then bills the total. Flat pricing is predictable and can waste headroom. Usage pricing tracks demand and can produce a bill you did not expect.