Categories of hosting solutions
A hosting solution includes hoarding and/or sharing specific content on a web server managed by a web hosting vendor. There are different classes of hosting services utilized for different ends, so let's study them. In this way, you can decide what you need, depending on whether you desire to create a blog, email mailbox accounts, or to share files with comrades and acquaintances.
- File hosting: a solution supplied by given companies, which enables you to share enormous files. These could be disk images, films, audio files, archived files, etc. This service is also known as file storage, and its only purpose is to share files, since it does not support web site 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 survey an inventory of all the files in a directory, but you will be unable to see .html or .php web page files in your browser. Free file storage services are often supported by exhibiting adverts by the download links, while a timer obliges you to await a given interval of time to observe them. A given file can be downloaded with restricted speed. If you own a paid file hosting plan, there are no restrictions as to how many files you can upload/download right away, and also there is no limitation with regard to the download speed or the file size.
Now, with the help of the cPanel hosting distributors, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more voguish "cloud hosting". This is a completely improper interpretation of the actual denotation of "cloud hosting". An actual cloud website hosting platform would apportion the workload between individual groups of web servers in a cluster, which are devoted to serving various web page hosting services (mail, data storage, statistics, DNS, databases, web hosting CP, etc.) So, the file hosting service is simply a type of a data storage hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even close.
- Image hosting: similar to file hosting; certain providers offer a hosting service for images solely. This hosting brand is good if you would like to share an enormous quantity of pics with mates or acquaintances since the solution is generally free of charge. You will obtain a random link for every pic or album and you can subsequently share this link. As with the file storage service, .html and .php files are not compatible, so the solution cannot be used for websites.
- E-mail hosting: a service devoted to handling your mailbox accounts. Some providers provide web page hosting solutions for web sites, but do not supply an email hosting solution. If you want to possess an email address with your domain name but do not desire to keep a website, then the e-mail hosting solution is what you need. You can set up email box accounts and manage them, but there will be no web service for the domains. The email hosting solution involves 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 some video clip, or you can embed the video file in your web page that is hosted somewhere else. The advantage of using this method instead of uploading the video in a web hosting account is that the video produces a given amount of CPU load, so with a couple of video files and a few hundred website visitors, you may have a hard time with your site hosting quotas. Embedding the video will permit you to run as many videos as you desire without worrying about system reserves.
- Web page hosting: this is the service that you require if you desire to keep a web site. To some degree, it contains all of the abovementioned hosting brands since, along with your web pages, you can also host pictures and files, you can run databases and e-mail accounts, upload videos, and so on. At Gymjims - Jargon-free IT, for example, you can have a glance at web hosting and dedicated web hosting packages that enable you to have all of the abovementioned solutions in one place. There may be limits based on the kind of hosting solution that you've chosen - a free hosting account, a paid shared hosting account, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your site hosting package may be better or worse compared with the standard e-mail/file/video/image hosting accounts that are conceived for particular content only.