Groups of hosting solutions
A hosting solution suggests saving and/or sharing particular content on a web server run by a hosting provider. There are different classes of hosting services used for different goals, so let's take a peek at these. In this way, you can decide what you want, depending on whether you'd like to own a web page, e-mail accounts, or to share files with chums and colleagues.
- File hosting: a solution distributed by given file storage providers, which permits you to share bulky files. These could be disk images, films, audio files, archives, etc. This service is also known as file storage, and its only function is to share files, since it does not offer web site uploading. The moment the files are uploaded, you will either obtain a randomly generated download link for each of them, or you will be able to read a list of all the files in a directory, but you will not be able to see .html or .php web files in your browser. Free file hosting services are often supported by showing adverts beside the download links, while a timer compels you to wait for a particular spell of time to observe them. A given file can be downloaded with restricted speed. If you run a paid file storage plan, there are no limitations as to how many files you can upload/download straight away, and also there is no limit as far as the download speed and the file size are concerned.
These days, with the help of the cPanel hosting providers, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more voguish "cloud hosting". This is a totally inaccurate explanation of the real denotation of "cloud hosting". An actual cloud website hosting system would distribute the workload between individual packs of servers in a cluster, which are dedicated to attending various web site hosting services (email, data storage, stats, DNS, databases, web hosting Control Panel, and so on.) So, the file hosting solution is just a kind of a storage space hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even near.
- Image hosting: comparable with file hosting; given distributors offer a hosting solution for images exclusively. This hosting brand is appropriate if you desire to share a large number of pictures with friends or acquaintances since the solution is generally free. You will get a random link for every image or album and you can then 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 solution dedicated to managing your electronic mail accounts. Some companies offer web hosting solutions for web pages, but do not offer an e-mail solution. If you want to create an email address with your domain name but do not desire to run a website, then the email hosting service is what you need. You can create email mailbox accounts and manage them, but there will be no hosting service for the domains. The e-mail hosting solution includes incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP email servers.
- Video hosting: this service enables you to upload and share video clips. You can either share a link to a given video, or you can embed the video in your website that is hosted elsewhere. The benefit of utilizing this approach in lieu of uploading the video file in a hosting account is that the video file produces a given amount of CPU load, so with a bunch of video files and a few hundred web site viewers, you may have trouble with your web hosting supplies. Embedding the video clip will enable you to administer as many video files as you wish without hassling about system supplies.
- Web site hosting: this is the solution that you need if you wish to keep a web site. To some degree, it encompasses all of the aforementioned hosting categories since, along with your sites, you can also host images and files, you can keep databases and email addresses, upload video clips, etc. At WebHost-ing.com, for example, you can view web hosting and dedicated web hosting solutions that enable you to get all of the aforesaid solutions in a single location. There may be limitations depending on the form of hosting solution that you've selected - a free hosting account, a paid shared hosting package, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your web page hosting account may be better or worse compared to the standard e-mail/file/video/image hosting packages that are intended for particular web content solely.