Categories of hosting solutions

A hosting service implies depositing and/or sharing particular web content on a hosting server managed by a website hosting vendor. There are different types of hosting services used for different purposes, so let's examine them. Doing so, you can elect what you need, depending on whether you desire to build a web site, e-mails, or to share files with buddies and colleagues.

- File hosting: a solution offered by given firms, which allows you to share huge files. These could be disk images, movies, 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 get a randomly created download link for each of them, or you will be able to see a register of all the files in a directory, but you will be unable to open .html or .php website files in your web browser. Free file hosting packages are often supported by exhibiting advertisements beside the download links, while a timer forces you to wait for a particular interval of time to see them. A given file can be downloaded with restricted speed. If you have a paid file hosting account, there are no restrictions as to how many files you can upload/download immediately, and also there is no limit when it comes 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 a completely inappropriate explanation of the real connotation of "cloud hosting". An actual cloud website hosting environment would assign the load between autonomous hosts of web servers in a cluster, which are committed to serving different web site hosting services (mail, disk space, statistics, DNS, databases, web page hosting Control Panel, and so on.) So, the file hosting service is merely a brand of a disk space hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even near.

- Image hosting: comparable with file hosting; certain companies provide a hosting service for images solely. This hosting variant is good if you want to share a great number of images with chums or acquaintances since the service is generally free of charge. You will get a random link for every 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 used for sites.

- E-mail hosting: a solution devoted to taking care of your email address accounts. Some corporations provide web page hosting solutions for websites, but do not provide an e-mail service. If you would like to create an email address with your domain name but do not want to own a website, then the email hosting solution is what you require. You can open mail accounts and manage them, but there will be no web solution for the domains. The e-mail hosting service includes incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP e-mail servers.

- Video hosting: this service permits you to upload and share videos. You can either share a link to a particular video, or you can embed the video in your web site that is hosted somewhere else. The advantage of utilizing this approach in lieu of uploading the video clip in a hosting account is that the video file brings about a given amount of central processing unit load, so with several video clips and a few hundred website visitors, you may have trouble with your web site hosting reserves. Embedding the video clip will allow you to have as many video clips as you want without bothering about system supplies.

- Website hosting: this is the service that you require if you desire to possess a web site. To a certain extent, it incorporates all of the aforementioned hosting groups since, along with your web sites, you can also host pictures and files, you can run databases and e-mailbox accounts, upload videos, and so on. At Exclusive Hosting, for instance, you can have a glance at web hosting and dedicated server hosting plans that allow you to get all of the aforementioned solutions in one single location. There may be limits depending on the kind of hosting solution that you've opted for - a free hosting package, a paid shared hosting plan, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your web hosting package may be better or worse compared to the usual e-mail/file/video/image hosting accounts that are designed for specific web content exclusively.