Categories of hosting services

A hosting service refers to storing and/or sharing particular web content on a hosting server administered by a web hosting company. There are different forms of hosting services utilized for different aims, so let's have a look at these. Doing so, you can pick what you need, on the basis of whether you'd like to set up a website, e-mail aliases, or to share files with comrades and colleagues.

- File hosting: a service furnished by given file storage providers, which allows you to share big files. These could be disk images, movies, audio files, archived documents, and so on. This solution is also known as file storage, and its sole aim is to share files, since it does not support web site 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 explore a record of all the files in a directory, but you will be unable to open .html or .php website files in your web browser. Free-of-charge file storage solutions frequently include advertisements next to the download links, while a timer compels you to await a given stretch of time to perceive them. A single file can be downloaded with limited speed. If you possess a paid file storage account, there are no limits as to how many files you can upload/download instantly, and also there is no limitation when it comes to the download speed or the file size.

These days, with the assistance of the cPanel hosting wholesalers, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more modish "cloud hosting". This is an entirely incongruous interpretation of the actual denotation of "cloud hosting". An actual cloud website hosting platform would assign the tasks at hand between autonomous hosts of web servers in a cluster, which are dedicated to serving various hosting services (mail, data storage, statistics, DNS, databases, hosting Control Panel, etc.) So, the file hosting solution is simply a variety of a disk storage hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even close.

- Image hosting: comparable with file hosting; given vendors provide a hosting solution for pictures exclusively. This hosting brand is good if you want to share a big quantity of images with friends or colleagues since the solution is commonly free of charge. You will receive a randomly generated link for each and every picture 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 web sites.

- Email hosting: a solution committed to taking care of your e-mailbox accounts. Some corporations offer web hosting solutions for websites, but do not offer an email hosting service. If you would like to manage an e-mail address with your domain name but do not want to own a website, then the email hosting service is what you need. You can set up email address accounts and manage 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 service enables you to upload and share video files. You can either share a link to a specific video file, or you can embed the video file in your web site that is hosted elsewhere. The benefit of availing of this method in lieu of uploading the video file in a web hosting account is that the video creates a particular amount of central processing unit load, so with a few video files and several hundred viewers, you may have a hard time with your web space hosting resources. Embedding the video file will enable you to possess as many video files as you would like without worrying about system quotas.

- Web site hosting: this is the service that you need if you desire to own a site. To some extent, it comprises all of the abovementioned hosting groups since, along with your sites, you can also host images and files, you can have databases and e-mail addresses, upload videos, etc. At Free Hostia, for instance, you can observe web hosting and dedicated server hosting plans that allow you to get all of the aforesaid solutions in a single location. There may be limits based on the type of hosting service that you've selected - a free hosting package, a paid shared hosting account, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your hosting package may be better or worse juxtaposed to the typical e-mail/file/video/image hosting accounts that are meant for particular web content solely.