Kinds of hosting services
A hosting service refers to stashing and/or sharing particular web content on a hosting server handled by a website hosting vendor. There are different categories of hosting services utilized for different aims, so let's have a glimpse at them. Thus, you can choose what you want, on the basis of whether you'd like to run a web portal, e-mails, or to share files with buddies and partners.
- File hosting: a solution delivered by various vendors, which lets you share immense files. These could be disk images, films, audio files, archived documents, etc. This solution is also known as file storage, and its single function is to share files, since it does not offer site uploading. Once the files are uploaded, you will either receive an accidentally created download link for each of them, or you will be able to view a roster of all the files in a directory, but you will not be able to open .html or .php web files in your browser. Free-of-charge file hosting services are often supported by displaying ads next to the download links, while a timer makes you await a particular spell of time to observe them. A single file can be downloaded with restricted speed. If you get a paid file hosting package, there are no limitations as to how many files you can upload/download at once, and also there is no limitation with regard to the download speed or the file size.
At the moment, with the help of the cPanel hosting suppliers, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more stylish "cloud hosting". This is a completely imprecise interpretation of the real definition of "cloud hosting". An actual cloud website hosting system would share the workload between individual packs of servers in a cluster, which are dedicated to attending various site hosting services (electronic mail, storage space, statistics, DNS, databases, web hosting Control Panel, etc.) So, the file hosting service is simply a kind of a disk space hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even near.
- Image hosting: comparable with file hosting; given companies offer a hosting service for pictures only. This hosting variant is suitable if you wish to share a huge amount of pictures with friends or acquaintances since the solution is typically free of charge. You will get a random link for each and every pic or album and you can then share this link. As with the file storage service, .html and .php files are not compatible, so the service cannot be used for web pages.
- E-mail hosting: a service committed to handling your e-mail aliases. Some suppliers provide webspace hosting services for websites, but do not provide an e-mail hosting service. If you desire to launch an email address with your domain name but do not desire to possess a website, then the e-mail hosting service is what you need. You can set up e-mail address 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 solution enables you to upload and share video clips. You can either share a link to a particular video, or you can embed the video file in your site that is hosted somewhere else. The advantage of using this approach in lieu of uploading the video in a hosting account is that the video file brings about a particular amount of CPU load, so with a bunch of video files and several hundred visitors, you may have a hard time with your website hosting quotas. Embedding the video will enable you to operate as many video files as you desire without bothering about system reserves.
- Web site hosting: this is the service that you need if you want to possess a website. To a certain extent, it includes all of the abovementioned hosting kinds since, along with your sites, you can also host images and files, you can have databases and email address accounts, upload video files, and so on. At Mega Web Service, for example, you can have a gaze at web hosting and dedicated web server hosting accounts that enable you to have all of the aforesaid solutions in one location. There may be restrictions based on the form of hosting solution that you've settled on - a free hosting package, a paid shared hosting account, a VPS or a dedicated server. Depending on that, your hosting account may be better or worse compared with the routine e-mail/file/video/image hosting accounts that are created for specific web content solely.