Activating Your Free Hosting

Your Traxio account and your hosting account are two different things. Signing up creates the first; this article covers turning it into the second, and what to expect during the 30-day free period.

Before you start

You need a domain name you already own. Traxio does not sell domains, so if you have not registered one yet, do that first with any registrar — expect roughly £8–£12 a year for a .co.uk. You cannot complete setup without one, because the hosting account is created against a specific domain.

You do not need to enter card details. Nothing is charged during the first 30 days and no payment method is requested until you choose to continue.

Activating the account

1. Log in to the client area.
2. Open Services and select your Traxio Free Start plan.
3. Enter the domain name you want to host. Type it without www and without http:// — just yourdomain.co.uk.
4. Confirm. Provisioning usually completes within a couple of minutes.
5. Watch for the welcome email. It contains your DirectAdmin URL, username and a temporary password, plus the nameservers you will need in the next step.

What to do next, in order

The order matters, because DNS changes take the longest and everything else waits on them.

1. Point your domain first. Update the nameservers at your registrar before doing anything else — see Pointing Your Domain to Traxio. Propagation typically completes within an hour or two.
2. Log in to DirectAdmin and change the temporary password while you wait.
3. Check SSL has issued. This happens automatically once DNS resolves, so it cannot complete before step one has taken effect.
4. Install your site through Softaculous, or upload your own files.

If the welcome email has not arrived

Check spam and promotions folders first — automated provisioning mail is frequently filtered. If it is genuinely missing after fifteen minutes, you can retrieve your DirectAdmin login link from the client area under Services rather than waiting for the email to be resent.

What happens at the end of the 30 days

An invoice is issued for the first monthly term at £0.99. If you pay, hosting continues unchanged. If you do not, the account is suspended 7 days after the invoice date and terminated after 14 days, at which point files, databases and email are permanently deleted. You are emailed before each step, and you can download a full backup from DirectAdmin at any point up to termination.

Because no card details are held, nothing can be charged automatically. Deciding not to continue requires no action from you.

Still stuck?

Provisioning problems specific to your account are handled by Traxio directly — use the contact form. Anything else is usually faster in the community forum.

Understanding your resource allowance

Every account comes with the same published limits: 5GB of NVMe storage and 10GB of bandwidth per month, plus MySQL/MariaDB databases, email accounts on your domain, cron jobs and FTP access. There is no “unlimited” anywhere in the specification, deliberately — the plan page publishes the real numbers so you can check them against your project before you build anything.

As a rough guide to what fits: a WordPress site with a modest media library typically uses 500MB–1.5GB of storage, a hand-written HTML site a fraction of that, and a small forum somewhere in between until attachments accumulate. Bandwidth of 10GB a month comfortably covers a few thousand visits to a well-optimised site. What does not fit: video hosting, large file downloads, or anything storing big media collections. If that describes your project, this is the wrong plan — and knowing that on day one is better than discovering it on day twenty-nine.

A checklist for the first week

The activation steps above get you a working account. These items are worth doing in the first few days, before the site has content you would mind losing:

• Force HTTPS once your certificate has issued, so nobody lands on the insecure version — one .htaccess rule.
• Add SPF and DKIM records if you will send any email from the domain, including WordPress notifications and forum sign-up mail. Missing these is the usual reason mail from a brand-new domain lands in spam — see Editing DNS Records.
• Set your real contact email in the client area profile. Renewal notices, invoice emails and suspension warnings all go there, and a stale address is how people miss the day-7 warning.
• Take a first backup from DirectAdmin once your site exists, and download it. It takes two minutes and establishes the habit.
• Bookmark your DirectAdmin URL from the welcome email, since it is on port 2222 rather than a normal web address.

Deciding at the end of the trial

The trial is the full product, not a cut-down preview — the same DirectAdmin panel, the same server, the same limits you would have as a paying customer. That is intentional: the point of the 30 days is that you decide after using the thing, not before. Two practical suggestions for making the decision well:

• Test the parts you will actually depend on. Install your application, send yourself email from the domain, restore a backup once. A trial spent only looking at the control panel tells you less than one spent doing your real workflow.
• Take a full backup before day 30 regardless of your decision. If you continue, it is a free safety copy. If you do not, it is your data leaving with you — which is exactly how it should work.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to enter card details to start the trial?

No. No payment method is requested during sign-up or at any point in the first 30 days, and because nothing is held, nothing can be charged automatically. If you decide not to continue, no action is required.

Can I use a domain I have not bought yet?

You need a registered domain before activation, because the hosting account is created against a specific domain name. Traxio does not sell domains, so register one first with any registrar — a .co.uk typically costs £8–£12 a year — then come back and activate.

What happens to my domain if I leave?

Nothing. Your domain is registered with your registrar, not with Traxio, so it remains yours regardless of what happens to the hosting. Point it at a new host and carry on. This is one of the reasons the plan is bring-your-own-domain in the first place — you are never locked in through the address.

Is the trial the same product as the paid plan?

Yes, identical. Same panel, same server, same 5GB/10GB limits, same features. The only thing that changes after 30 days is that a £0.99 monthly invoice is issued if you choose to continue.

Can I host more than one website?

The account is provisioned against one primary domain. If you have several projects, the honest answer is that this plan is designed around one site per account — check the plan page for the current specification rather than assuming.

Where do I get help during the trial?

Anything about your own site — WordPress questions, DNS puzzles, code errors — is answered in the community forum, where answers stay public for the next person. Account-specific problems such as provisioning failures or billing go to Traxio directly via the contact form.