Sorts of hosting services
A hosting solution concerns storing and/or sharing particular web content on a hosting server run by a hosting distributor. There are different forms of hosting services used for different ends, so let's have a glance at these. In this way, you can pick what you want, depending on whether you wish to set up a web portal, mail accounts, or to share files with comrades and associates.
- File hosting: a service offered by certain hosts, which enables you to share immense files. These could be disk images, films, audio files, archived files, and so on. This service is also known as file storage, and its only purpose is to share files, since it does not offer website uploading. The moment the files are uploaded, you will either obtain an accidentally created download link for each of them, or you will be able to survey a roster of all the files in a directory, but you will not be able to open .html or .php web files in your browser. Free-of-cost file hosting plans are often supported by displaying ads beside the download links, while a timer compels you to await a given period 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 limitations as to how many files you can upload/download at once, and also there is no limit with regard to the download speed or the file size.
Now, with the assistance of the cPanel hosting corporations, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more modern "cloud hosting". This is an entirely imprecise interpretation of the actual denotation of "cloud hosting". A real cloud website hosting platform would apportion the workload between independent groups of web servers in a cluster, which are committed to serving various web hosting services (electronic mail, data storage, stats, DNS, databases, website hosting CP, etc.) So, the file hosting service is just a type of a storage space hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even near.
- Image hosting: resembling file hosting; some firms provide a hosting solution for images only. This hosting variant is appropriate if you want to share an immense amount of images with buddies or colleagues since the service is commonly free of cost. You will get a random link for every picture or album and you can then share this link. As with the file storage solution, .html and .php files are not supported, so the solution cannot be utilized for sites.
- E-mail hosting: a service devoted to managing your e-mail accounts. Some corporations offer web site hosting services for sites, but do not supply an e-mail service. If you desire to open a mail address with your domain name but do not wish to possess a web site, then the e-mail hosting solution is what you require. You can set up mail address accounts and administer them, but there will be no hosting service for the domains. The e-mail hosting service includes incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP servers.
- Video hosting: this service permits you to upload and share video files. You can either share a link to a certain video, or you can embed the video in your web site that is hosted somewhere else. The benefit of availing of this method in lieu of uploading the video in a web hosting account is that the video generates a certain amount of CPU load, so with a handful of videos and several hundred website viewers, you may have a hard time with your web page hosting resources. Embedding the video clip will allow you to manage as many video files as you desire without bothering about system reserves.
- Web site hosting: this is the service that you need if you desire to possess a website. To a certain extent, it involves all of the abovementioned hosting sorts since, along with your web pages, you can also host pictures and files, you can run databases and e-mailbox accounts, upload video clips, etc. At WebHost-ing.com, for example, you can have a look at web hosting and dedicated hosting plans that allow you to have all of the aforesaid solutions in one single location. There may be limits depending on the sort of hosting solution that you've opted for - a free hosting account, a paid shared hosting package, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your hosting package may be better or worse compared to the usual e-mail/file/video/image hosting packages that are intended for specific content solely.