Glossary

This glossary explains the key terms you'll see throughout InfraNest, written for anyone — no technical background needed.

Overview

• InfraNest uses a set of consistent terms across the app, from how your account is organized to how monitoring and alerts work.
• Knowing these terms will help you navigate menus, understand notifications, and make sense of settings without guessing.
• This page is a reference — come back anytime you see an unfamiliar word.

Key terms

1. Organization (workspace) — Your tenant in InfraNest. Everything — domains, servers, members, billing — is scoped to an organization. You can belong to more than one.
2. Integration / provider credential — A connection to an external service, such as Hetzner, Cloudflare, or TransIP. Once connected, your resources sync in from that provider.
3. DNS zone — A domain's DNS namespace. Records (A, CNAME, MX, TXT, and so on) live inside a zone.
4. Domain vs contact — A domain is a registered name. A contact is a reusable set of registrant, admin, or tech details that gets attached to domains.
5. Drop-catch / watched domain — Monitoring an expiring domain so you can register it the moment it becomes available again.
6. Dynamic IP — A way to keep a DNS record or firewall rule automatically in sync with a changing IP address, such as a home or VPN connection.
7. Monitor (check) — A periodic health check on one of your services. A failing monitor can open an incident.
8. Maintenance window — A planned period where alerts are paused and your status page shows "maintenance" instead of an outage.
9. Status page — A public page that shows the health of your services to your users or subscribers.
10. Alert destination — Where your alerts get delivered: email, Telegram, Slack, Teams, Discord, or a webhook.
11. Certificate inventory — The SSL/TLS certificates InfraNest has discovered for your domains. These are found automatically, not added manually.
12. Snapshot vs backup — A snapshot is a point-in-time copy of a server's disk that you take yourself. Backups are automated copies made by your provider.
13. API token — A credential used to access the API, scoped by abilities (read or write for each resource).
14. Webhook — An automatic message sent over the internet. Inbound webhooks are sent to InfraNest (and signed for security); outbound webhooks are sent from InfraNest to your own endpoint when something happens.
15. Entitlement / plan limit — What's included in your subscription plan. Features outside your plan show an "Upgrade" badge.
16. Trial — A period with full features and no credit card required. If you don't upgrade before it ends, your account converts to Free.

NoteSome terms, like monitor and incident, or domain and contact, are closely related but not interchangeable — check the specific definition above if you're unsure.

TipIf you see an "Upgrade" badge next to a feature, it means that feature is outside your current plan's entitlement — check your plan settings for details.