Classes of hosting solutions
A hosting service means storing and/or sharing particular content on a web hosting server administered by a website hosting company. There are various kinds of hosting services utilized for different purposes, so let's examine them. Thus, you can decide what you want, on the basis of whether you desire to run a weblog, email mailbox accounts, or to share files with pals and associates.
- File hosting: a solution provided by given companies, which permits you to share huge files. These could be disk images, movies, audio files, archives, etc. This solution is also known as file storage, and its sole designation is to share files, since it does not support web page uploading. The moment the files are uploaded, you will either receive a randomly generated download link for each of them, or you will be able to view an inventory of all the files in a directory, but you will not be able to view .html or .php web page files in your browser. Free-of-cost file storage solutions frequently involve ads beside the download links, while a timer compels you to await a given span of time to view them. A given file can be downloaded with restricted speed. If you possess a paid file hosting account, there are no restrictions as to how many files you can upload/download at once, and also there is no restriction in regard to the download speed or the file size.
These days, with the help of the cPanel hosting companies, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more voguish "cloud hosting". This is an entirely unsuitable explanation of the literal denotation of "cloud hosting". A real cloud website hosting platform would allocate the load between separate bunches of web servers in a cluster, which are dedicated to serving different webspace hosting services (mail, disk storage, stats, DNS, databases, site hosting CP, and so on.) So, the file hosting solution is just a brand of a data storage hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even close.
- Image hosting: comparable with file hosting; some providers offer a hosting solution for images solely. This hosting type is good if you want to share an immense number of pics with friends or colleagues since the service is generally free of charge. You will get a randomly generated link for every pic or album and you can subsequently share this link. As with the file hosting service, .html and .php files are not compatible, so the service cannot be used for websites.
- E-mail hosting: a service devoted to tackling your email box accounts. Some corporations offer web hosting solutions for sites, but do not supply an email service. If you want to have a mail address with your domain name but do not desire to own a website, then the email hosting solution is what you want. You can set up mailbox accounts and manage them, but there will be no web solution for the domains. The email hosting solution involves incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP mail servers.
- Video hosting: this solution enables you to upload and share video clips. You can either share a link to a specific video file, or you can embed the video in your site that is hosted elsewhere. The advantage of availing of this method in lieu of uploading the video clip in a hosting account is that the video file brings about a specific amount of central processing unit load, so with a bunch of video files and several hundred web page visitors, you may have a hard time with your web site hosting resources. Embedding the video file will allow you to operate as many video clips as you desire without hassling about system quotas.
- Web hosting: this is the service that you need if you want to have a web site. To a certain extent, it consists of all of the abovementioned hosting groups since, along with your web pages, you can also host images and files, you can run databases and e-mail address accounts, upload video files, and so on. At YourSiteService.com, for instance, you can have a look at web hosting and dedicated web server hosting services that enable you to get all of the aforementioned solutions in one location. There may be restrictions depending on the sort of hosting service that you've picked - a free hosting plan, a paid shared hosting account, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your webspace hosting package may be better or worse compared to the usual e-mail/file/video/image hosting accounts that are designed for particular content only.