Classes of hosting solutions
A hosting solution concerns keeping and/or sharing specific content on a web server run by a website hosting distributor. There are different groups of hosting services used for different goals, so let's survey these. Doing so, you can elect what you need, based on whether you desire to set up a web site, mail address accounts, or to share files with pals and partners.
- File hosting: a service delivered by some vendors, which allows you to share bulky files. These could be disk images, motion pictures, audio files, archived files, etc. This service is also known as file storage, and its only aim is to share files, since it does not support web page uploading. As soon as the files are uploaded, you will either receive an accidentally generated download link for each of them, or you will be able to see an inventory of all the files in a directory, but you will be unable to open .html or .php web files in your web browser. Free-of-cost file hosting accounts frequently involve adverts by the download links, while a timer forces you to wait for a certain period of time to see them. A single file can be downloaded with restricted speed. If you possess a paid file storage account, there are no limits as to how many files you can upload/download immediately, and also there is no limit with regard to the download speed or the file size.
Now, with the help of the cPanel hosting companies, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more modern "cloud hosting". This is a totally fallacious interpretation of the literal definition of "cloud hosting". An actual cloud website hosting platform would divide the workload between autonomous groups of web hosting servers in a cluster, which are devoted to serving different hosting services (email, disk storage, statistics, DNS, databases, webspace hosting CP, etc.) So, the file hosting solution is simply a variety of a data storage hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even near.
- Image hosting: akin to file hosting; specific companies offer a hosting service for images exclusively. This hosting type is suitable if you wish to share an immense number of images with friends or associates since the service is mostly free of cost. You will obtain a random link for each and every pic or album and you can then share this link. As with the file storage solution, .html and .php files are not compatible, so the solution cannot be utilized for web pages.
- Email hosting: a service committed to administering your e-mail addresses. Some suppliers provide web page hosting solutions for websites, but do not offer an e-mail hosting service. If you desire to possess an email address with your domain name but do not desire to own a website, then the email hosting solution is what you need. You can set up email address accounts and manage them, but there will be no hosting solution for the domains. The e-mail hosting service involves incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP email servers.
- Video hosting: this service enables you to upload and share videos. You can either share a link to a specific video file, or you can embed the video file in your web site that is hosted somewhere else. The advantage of availing of this method in lieu of uploading the video file in a hosting account is that the video file produces a specific amount of central processing unit load, so with a handful of video clips and several hundred web page visitors, you may have a hard time with your webspace hosting resources. Embedding the video file will allow you to manage as many video clips as you want without worrying about system quotas.
- Web site hosting: this is the service that you need if you wish to possess a website. To some degree, it encompasses all of the aforesaid hosting types since, along with your websites, you can also host pictures and files, you can create databases and e-mails, upload video files, etc. At Castle Host, for instance, you can have a peek at web hosting and dedicated server hosting solutions that enable you to get all of the abovementioned solutions in a single location. There may be limitations depending on the sort of hosting solution that you've chosen - a free hosting account, a paid shared hosting package, a VPS or a dedicated server. Depending on that, your web site hosting account may be better or worse compared with the routine e-mail/file/video/image hosting packages that are made for particular content solely.