Types of hosting solutions
A hosting solution is connected with depositing and/or sharing specific content on a web server administered by a website hosting provider. There are various varieties of hosting services used for various ends, so let's have a glimpse at them. In that way, you can pick what you need, based on whether you desire to have a site, e-mail box accounts, or to share files with chums and acquaintances.
- File hosting: a service distributed by some vendors, which permits you to share large files. These could be disk images, films, audio files, archived files, etc. This service is also known as file storage, and its single function is to share files, since it does not offer web page uploading. As soon as the files are uploaded, you will either receive a randomly generated download link for each of them, or you will be able to survey a list of all the files in a directory, but you will be unable to open .html or .php web page files in your browser. Free file hosting plans are often supported by displaying ads beside the download links, while a timer compels you to await a specific period of time to observe them. A single file can be downloaded with limited speed. If you purchase a paid file storage package, there are no restrictions as to how many files you can upload/download instantly, and also there is no limitation in regard to the download speed or the file size.
These days, with the help of the cPanel hosting merchants, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more modish "cloud hosting". This is a thoroughly distorted interpretation of the actual meaning of "cloud hosting". An actual cloud website hosting environment would divide the tasks at hand between individual groups of servers in a cluster, which are dedicated to attending different web hosting services (mail, disk storage, stats, DNS, databases, web hosting Control Panel, etc.) So, the file hosting service is only a kind of a data storage hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even near.
- Image hosting: close to file hosting; some companies offer a hosting solution for images exclusively. This hosting brand is good if you would like to share a big quantity of images with comrades or acquaintances since the service is generally free of cost. You will get a random link for each image or album and you can subsequently share this link. As with the file storage solution, .html and .php files are not compatible, so the service cannot be used for web pages.
- E-mail hosting: a service committed to tackling your e-mail aliases. Some distributors provide website hosting services for web sites, but do not provide an email hosting solution. If you desire to set up an email address with your domain name but do not desire to keep a website, then the email hosting solution is what you need. You can set up email mailbox accounts and administer them, but there will be no web solution for the domains. The e-mail hosting solution includes incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP e-mail servers.
- Video hosting: this service allows you to upload and share videos. You can either share a link to a given video, or you can embed the video in your web page that is hosted elsewhere. The advantage of utilizing this approach instead of uploading the video clip in a web hosting account is that the video file produces a certain amount of central processing unit load, so with a handful of video files and several hundred web page visitors, you may have trouble with your webspace hosting supplies. Embedding the video file will allow you to administer as many videos as you wish without worrying about system supplies.
- Website hosting: this is the solution that you require if you want to keep a web site. To a certain extent, it comprises all of the aforesaid hosting varieties since, along with your web sites, you can also host pics and files, you can keep databases and e-mail addresses, upload video clips, and so on. At HD Web Hosting, for example, you can take a peek at web hosting and dedicated server hosting services that enable you to get all of the aforesaid solutions in one location. There may be limitations depending on the sort of hosting service that you've opted for - a free hosting plan, a paid shared hosting plan, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your web space hosting plan may be better or worse compared to the usual email/file/video/image hosting packages that are conceived for particular web content solely.