Categories of hosting solutions

A hosting service involves stashing and/or sharing particular web content on a web server managed by a website hosting company. There are different classes of hosting services used for different aims, so let's have a look at these. In that way, you can conclude what you need, on the basis of whether you desire to set up a web page, mail accounts, or to share files with comrades and associates.

- File hosting: a service made available by given providers, which enables you to share bulky files. These could be disk images, motion pictures, audio files, archives, etc. This solution is also known as file storage, and its sole function is to share files, since it does not offer web site uploading. Once the files are uploaded, you will either obtain a randomly generated download link for each of them, or you will be able to examine a roll of all the files in a directory, but you will not be able to see .html or .php web page files in your web browser. Free-of-cost file hosting packages are often supported by showing advertisements by the download links, while a timer obliges you to await a particular spell of time to observe them. A given file can be downloaded with restricted speed. If you run a paid file hosting plan, there are no limitations as to how many files you can upload/download right away, and also there is no limit in regard to the download speed or the file size.

These days, with the assistance of the cPanel hosting companies, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more trendy "cloud hosting". This is an entirely incorrect explanation of the actual meaning of "cloud hosting". A real cloud website hosting platform would share the tasks at hand between autonomous groups of hosting servers in a cluster, which are devoted to attending miscellaneous hosting services (mail, data storage, statistics, DNS, databases, hosting Control Panel, etc.) So, the file hosting solution is only a variety of a data storage hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even near.

- Image hosting: similar to file hosting; given vendors offer a hosting solution for pictures only. This hosting type is suitable if you want to share a huge number of pics with comrades or acquaintances since the solution is typically free. You will obtain a randomly generated link for each picture 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 utilized for websites.

- Email hosting: a solution devoted to tackling your email accounts. Some firms offer website hosting services for sites, but do not provide an email service. If you wish to possess an e-mail address with your domain name but do not want to own a site, then the e-mail hosting service is what you require. You can create electronic mail accounts and manage them, but there will be no web solution for the domains. The e-mail hosting solution involves incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP email servers.

- Video hosting: this service allows you to upload and share video files. You can either share a link to a particular video clip, or you can embed the video file in your web site that is hosted elsewhere. The benefit of availing of this approach in lieu of uploading the video 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 clips and several hundred web page viewers, you may have difficulty with your web page hosting reserves. Embedding the video will allow you to own as many video files as you want to without worrying about system reserves.

- Web hosting: this is the service that you require if you want to have a web site. To a certain degree, it comprises all of the abovementioned hosting groups since, along with your sites, you can also host pics and files, you can run databases and mailbox accounts, upload videos, etc. At Smartest Media, for instance, you can take a look at web hosting and dedicated server hosting services that allow you to have all of the aforementioned solutions in one single location. There may be limits based on the form of hosting solution that you've picked - a free hosting account, a paid shared hosting account, a VPS or a dedicated server. Depending on that, your web site hosting package may be better or worse juxtaposed to the usual email/file/video/image hosting packages that are meant for specific web content exclusively.