Classes of hosting solutions

A hosting solution entails keeping and/or sharing certain web content on a server administered by a website hosting provider. There are different categories of hosting services used for different ends, so let's examine them. In this way, you can pick what you need, based on whether you desire to build a web portal, e-mail accounts, or to share files with comrades and acquaintances.

- File hosting: a solution distributed by some providers, which permits you to share huge files. These could be disk images, movies, audio files, archived files, and so on. This solution is also known as file storage, and its sole aim is to share files, since it does not offer web page uploading. Once the files are uploaded, you will either obtain an accidentally generated download link for each of them, or you will be able to explore a roster of all the files in a directory, but you will be unable to view .html or .php website files in your web browser. Free file storage plans are frequently supported by showing ads next to the download links, while a timer compels you to wait for a certain amount of time to observe them. A single file can be downloaded with limited speed. If you own a paid file hosting account, there are no restrictions as to how many files you can upload/download instantly, and also there is no limitation with regard to the download speed or the file size.

These days, with the assistance of the cPanel hosting suppliers, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more trendy "cloud hosting". This is a totally inappropriate explanation of the real connotation of "cloud hosting". A real cloud website hosting platform would distribute the tasks at hand between independent stacks of web hosting servers in a cluster, which are committed to serving miscellaneous website hosting services (mail, storage space, statistics, DNS, databases, website hosting Control Panel, etc.) So, the file hosting solution is just a kind of a disk space hosting service, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even close.

- Image hosting: comparable with file hosting; specific vendors provide a hosting solution for images exclusively. This hosting brand is suitable if you want to share a large quantity of pictures with comrades or partners since the service is mostly free. You will get a randomly generated link for each picture or album and you can then share this link. As with the file storage service, .html and .php files are not supported, so the solution cannot be used for web sites.

- E-mail hosting: a service dedicated to tackling your email addresses. Some companies provide website hosting services for sites, but do not supply an email hosting solution. If you desire to manage an email address with your domain name but do not want to possess a website, then the email hosting service is what you want. You can create email address accounts and administer them, but there will be no web service for the domains. The e-mail hosting service involves incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP e-mail servers.

- Video hosting: this solution enables you to upload and share video files. You can either share a link to some video, or you can embed the video clip in your web page that is hosted elsewhere. The benefit of availing of this approach in lieu of uploading the video in a hosting account is that the video clip creates a specific amount of central processing unit load, so with a handful of videos and several hundred site viewers, you may have difficulty with your web hosting resources. Embedding the video will enable you to own as many videos as you want to without hassling about system resources.

- Web page hosting: this is the solution that you need if you desire to keep a site. To some degree, it contains all of the aforementioned hosting categories since, along with your web pages, you can also host pics and files, you can set up databases and e-mail address accounts, upload video clips, and so on. At Free Hostia, for instance, you can explore web hosting and dedicated web server hosting services that enable you to have all of the aforementioned services in one single place. There may be limits depending on the type of hosting solution that you've opted for - a free hosting account, a paid shared hosting plan, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your hosting account may be better or worse juxtaposed to the regular e-mail/file/video/image hosting plans that are designed for particular web content solely.