Groups of hosting solutions

A hosting solution suggests depositing and/or sharing specific web content on a web hosting server run by a web hosting distributor. There are different groups of hosting services used for various ends, so let's take a glance at these. In that way, you can decide what you need, based on whether you wish to have a web page, email aliases, or to share files with friends and acquaintances.

- File hosting: a service provided by some file storage providers, which permits you to share bulky files. These could be disk images, films, audio files, archived files, and so on. This service is also known as file storage, and its sole goal is to share files, since it does not support website uploading. The moment the files are uploaded, you will either get a randomly generated download link for each of them, or you will be able to view a table of all the files in a directory, but you will be unable to view .html or .php web site files in your web browser. Free-of-charge file hosting packages often include ads beside the download links, while a timer makes you await a certain period of time to see them. A single file can be downloaded with limited speed. If you run a paid file hosting plan, there are no restrictions as to how many files you can upload/download straight away, and also there is no limitation as far as the download speed and the file size are concerned.

Now, with the assistance of the cPanel hosting traders, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more modern "cloud hosting". This is a totally inapt explanation of the literal denotation of "cloud hosting". An actual cloud website hosting environment would split the workload between independent sets of hosting servers in a cluster, which are devoted to attending various website hosting services (email, data storage, statistics, DNS, databases, hosting CP, and so on.) So, the file hosting service is simply a kind of a data storage hosting service, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even close.

- Image hosting: close to file hosting; specific distributors provide a hosting solution for pictures only. This hosting brand is good if you want to share an immense amount of pictures with friends or partners since the service is generally free of charge. You will obtain a random link for each pic or album and you can then share this link. As with the file hosting solution, .html and .php files are not supported, so the service cannot be used for web sites.

- Email hosting: a solution committed to administering your e-mail address accounts. Some vendors offer site hosting solutions for web pages, but do not supply an e-mail hosting service. If you wish to get a mail address with your domain name but do not want to possess a website, then the e-mail hosting solution is what you need. You can create electronic mail accounts and administer them, but there will be no web service for the domains. The email hosting solution includes incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP e-mail servers.

- Video hosting: this service enables you to upload and share video files. You can either share a link to a particular video file, or you can embed the video file in your website that is hosted elsewhere. The advantage of using this method in lieu of uploading the video file in a hosting account is that the video file brings about a particular amount of central processing unit load, so with several videos and a few hundred web page viewers, you may have difficulty with your hosting resources. Embedding the video will enable you to keep as many video files as you want to without bothering about system resources.

- Web site hosting: this is the solution that you require if you want to possess a site. To a certain extent, it embodies all of the abovementioned hosting categories since, along with your websites, you can also host pics and files, you can set up databases and mail accounts, upload video files, and so on. At Free Hostia, for example, you can take a peek at web hosting and dedicated web server hosting accounts that permit you to have all of the abovementioned services in one single place. There may be limitations based on the sort of hosting service that you've picked - a free hosting account, a paid shared hosting account, a VPS or a dedicated server. Depending on that, your web hosting plan may be better or worse compared to the typical e-mail/file/video/image hosting accounts that are tailored for particular web content solely.