Reference

Terminology

Every term we use across the platform, our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy — explained in plain English. No jargon left undefined.

Account & platform

Words about you, your login and the platform itself.

Account: Your identity on Anested Cloud — created with an email + password or Google sign-in. Every service you buy, every invoice and every resource hangs off your account.
Dashboard: The logged-in control panel at /dashboard where you create, manage, monitor and renew all your services.
OTP (One-Time Password): A short code emailed to you to verify that you own your email address — used at registration and for sensitive actions. Each code works once and expires quickly.
API key: A secret token that lets your programs talk to a service (e.g. Nest Storage) without your password. Treat it like a password — anyone holding the key can act on your behalf until you revoke it.
Resource: Any single thing you run on the platform: one VPS, one website, one database project, one storage bucket, one chatbot, one analytics site.

Billing & purchases

The words used on invoices, at checkout and in our Terms of Service.

Session / Billing period: The paid term of a service — e.g. 1 month, 12 months or 24 months. It starts the moment your payment is confirmed and ends on the stated expiry date. Cancellation and refund rules are counted against the session's payment date.
Invoice: The bill generated for every purchase, visible under Billing in your dashboard. An invoice is “pending” until paid; the service it covers is only provisioned after payment succeeds.
Pending invoice: An invoice created for an order you have not paid yet. Nothing is charged and nothing is provisioned; you can pay it later from the Billing page or cancel the order entirely.
Mandate / Autopay: A recurring-payment authorisation (e.g. UPI Autopay or card mandate) registered with our payment gateway so renewals can be charged automatically. Setting it up may involve a small token charge (usually ₹5) that the gateway refunds automatically. The mandate is cancelled when the service is refunded or terminated.
Pro-rata: Proportional to time. A pro-rata amount is calculated day-wise — e.g. if you paid for 12 months and 9 months remain, the pro-rata unused value is 9/12ths (75%) of what you paid.
Remaining Credit: The unused, pro-rated portion of an amount you paid for a session, counted from a given date to the end of that session. This is the figure used in Section 8 of the Terms of Service — if we fail to provide a purchased server, you get your Remaining Credit back plus 10% of it as compensation.
Refund window: The 7 (seven) calendar days after a payment during which you may request cancellation and a refund. After the window closes, no refund or cancellation is possible in any case. Approved refunds permanently delete everything bought under that invoice.
Coupon: A discount code applied at checkout. Coupons are limited offers — they can't be exchanged for cash, and abusing them (e.g. with multiple accounts) voids the discount.
Renewal: Paying for the next session of an existing service. Renewal extends the expiry date; with autopay it happens automatically. Renewing within the 30-day grace period after expiry automatically un-suspends the service.
Upgrade / Downgrade: Moving to a bigger (upgrade) or smaller (downgrade) plan. Upgrades are typically charged pro-rata for the time left in your session; downgrades mid-session are generally not allowed until renewal.
Chargeback: Asking your bank to reverse a payment instead of asking us for a refund. Raising a chargeback for services actually delivered is treated as a breach of the Terms and can lead to account termination.

Service lifecycle

The states every paid service moves through.

Provisioning: The automated setup of your resource after payment — creating the virtual machine, assigning the IP, preparing the database or site. Usually takes seconds to a few minutes.
Active / Live: The normal running state: your server responds, your site serves, your database accepts connections.
Suspended: Temporarily switched off but with data retained. Happens when a session expires unpaid, when payments fail, or for violations of the Acceptable Use Policy. A suspended server is stopped, a suspended site stops serving, a suspended database refuses connections. Renewing (or resolving the violation) restores it.
Grace period: The 30 (thirty) days after a session expires during which your data is kept even though the service is suspended. Renew within it and everything comes back; miss it and the data is permanently deleted.
Terminated / Deleted: Permanently removed. A terminated service and all its data are unrecoverable. Happens 30 days after unpaid expiry, immediately upon refund approval, or after serious Terms violations.
Expiry date / Renews on: The date your current session ends. Shown on each service and on your dashboard. After this date the service is suspended unless renewed.

Cloud VPS

Terms you'll meet when buying and running a virtual server.

VPS (Virtual Private Server): Your own private server carved out of a larger physical machine. You get full root access, a dedicated IP, and fixed CPU/RAM/disk — isolated from every other customer on the same hardware.
Root access: Full administrator control of your server's operating system. You can install anything, configure anything — and are equally responsible for securing and maintaining what you install.
Dedicated IPv4: A public internet address (e.g. 98.70.x.x) that belongs to your server alone, so you can point domains at it and run any service on any port.
vCPU: A virtual CPU core allocated to your server. Plans state how many vCPUs you get; sustained 100% usage far beyond normal patterns falls under fair use.
RAM: Working memory of your server. When it runs out, your applications slow down or crash — pick a plan sized for your workload. Our VPS plans rate memory in eRAM (see below).
eRAM (equivalent RAM): The memory rating shown on our VPS plans, cards and invoices — always written as “X GB eRAM”, never plain RAM. Just like a vCPU is not one dedicated physical core, eRAM is an equivalent rating, not a raw physical-GB claim: it expresses the effective memory capacity your workload gets on our premium, high-performance memory — inclusive of the operating system and the background system services running on the server. In short: a 4 GB eRAM plan is rated to run like a typical 4 GB server (OS and system overhead included), even though the underlying physical allocation on premium memory differs.
SSD / Disk: The storage attached to your server, measured in GB. Your OS, apps and data live here. Exceeding it prevents writes; it is not a backup.
Bandwidth / Transfer: The volume of data your server sends/receives over the internet per month, measured in GB or TB. Exceeding your allowance may lead to throttling or a needed upgrade.
SSH: Secure Shell — the encrypted terminal protocol you use to log into your VPS (ssh root@your-ip). Credentials are shown once at creation; store them safely.
Snapshot / Backup: A point-in-time copy of data. Unless your plan explicitly includes managed backups, backups are your responsibility — platform snapshots (if any) exist only for our own disaster recovery.

Web hosting & domains

Terms around websites, domains and DNS.

Web hosting: Managed space to run websites (PHP, WordPress, static) without managing a server yourself. Sold as an account-level plan with limits on sites, storage, databases and domains.
Site: One website under your hosting plan, with its own files, optional database and attached domains. Creating and deleting sites within your plan limits is free.
Domain: Your address on the internet (example.com). You must own or control any domain you attach to our platform.
Subdomain: A prefix of a domain (blog.example.com). Can be attached to sites independently of the parent domain.
DNS (Domain Name System): The internet's phone book — it translates domain names into IP addresses. Our DNS management (zone + record editor) is always free, independent of any paid plan.
Nameserver (NS): The servers authoritative for your domain's DNS (ours are ns1/ns2). “Transferring nameservers” to us means we host your DNS zone so you can manage records in the dashboard — it does not transfer domain ownership.
DNS record: One entry in your zone: A (name → IPv4), AAAA (IPv6), CNAME (alias), MX (mail), TXT (verification/SPF), SRV, etc. Each has a TTL — how long resolvers cache it.
TTL (Time To Live): How many seconds the world may cache a DNS record before re-asking. Lower = faster changes, more lookups. Our default is 14400 (4 hours).
SSL / TLS / HTTPS: The encryption layer behind the padlock icon. Certificates prove your site's identity and encrypt traffic between visitor and server.
WordPress: The popular CMS. One-click WordPress installs are available on plans whose limits include it.

Managed databases

Terms for MySQL, PostgreSQL and MongoDB services.

Managed database: A database we run for you on shared, isolated clusters — you get a connection string and we handle the servers, updates and isolation.
Database pack: An account-level bundle of database slots for one engine (e.g. 5 MySQL databases). Projects are free containers; the pack counts total databases across all your projects of that engine.
Project: A free container that groups databases and holds one set of credentials. E.g. an “acme-production” project may hold three databases inside your pack quota.
Connection string / URI: The single line your app uses to reach a database (e.g. mysql://user:pass@host:3306/db). Shown in the project's Connection tab; contains credentials, so keep it secret.
Storage quota (per DB): The disk limit each database may consume, defined by your pack. Exceeding it can block further writes until you free space or upgrade.
Engine: The database software family: MySQL, PostgreSQL or MongoDB. Packs, projects and quotas are tracked per engine.

Storage, chatbots & analytics

Terms for the remaining product lines.

Nest Storage: Object/file storage with an API — upload files via dashboard or API key and optionally serve them publicly over fast URLs.
Object / Bucket: An “object” is one stored file; storage is organised in bucket-like spaces under your account, counted against your plan's GB quota.
File serving: Delivering stored files (images, downloads, static sites) directly to visitors over HTTP with proper cache headers — no web server needed.
AI Chatbot: An embeddable chat widget trained on knowledge you upload (docs, FAQs, policies). It answers your visitors' questions from that knowledge; conversations are stored under your account.
Knowledge base: The documents and Q&A content you feed a chatbot. The bot cites which sources it used for each answer.
Web Analytics: Privacy-friendly visitor statistics for your sites — one lightweight script gives realtime visitors, pages, referrers, UTM campaigns, custom events, SEO audits and lead capture, billed per site.
UTM parameters: Tags added to links (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign…) so analytics can attribute visits to specific campaigns.
Custom event: A named action you choose to track on your site (e.g. “signup_clicked”) beyond automatic page views.

Policy & legal

Words used in our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Acceptable Use Policy (AUP): The list of prohibited activities in Section 10 of the Terms — spam, attacks, illegal content, mining, phishing and so on. Violating it is “wrong use”: services may be suspended and no refund is initiated.
Wrong use / Misuse: Any use of a service that breaches the Acceptable Use Policy or the Terms. Wrong use forfeits refunds — even within the 7-day window — and can lead to suspension or termination.
Fair use: The principle that high or “unlimited” allowances assume normal usage patterns. Extreme outliers that degrade the platform for others may be throttled after notice.
Force majeure: Events beyond anyone's reasonable control — natural disasters, war, grid failures, large-scale internet outages. Neither side is liable for delays caused by them.
Data controller / processor: Controller = the party that decides why and how personal data is processed (you, for your users' data). Processor = the party that processes it on the controller's behalf (us, for your hosted content).
Grievance Officer: The contact designated under Indian law for privacy complaints — reachable via support@anested.com (see the Privacy Policy).

Missing a term? Email support@anested.com and we'll add it.