Groups of hosting services

A hosting solution involves storing and/or sharing given content on a web hosting server handled by a web hosting company. There are different classes of hosting services used for different ends, so let's have a peek at these. In that way, you can choose what you want, depending on whether you desire to have a web page, e-mailbox accounts, or to share files with comrades and acquaintances.

- File hosting: a solution provided by various companies, which enables you to share huge files. These could be disk images, motion pictures, audio files, archived files, and so on. This solution is also known as file storage, and its single goal is to share files, since it does not offer web site uploading. As soon as the files are uploaded, you will either receive a randomly created download link for each of them, or you will be able to see an inventory of all the files in a directory, but you will be unable to load .html or .php web site files in your web browser. Free file storage solutions are frequently supported by exhibiting adverts by the download links, while a timer forces you to wait for a specific span of time to perceive them. A given file can be downloaded with restricted speed. If you own a paid file storage plan, there are no limits as to how many files you can upload/download at once, and also there is no restriction in regard to the download speed or the file size.

Nowadays, with the assistance of the cPanel hosting traders, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more trendy "cloud hosting". This is an entirely awry explanation of the literal denotation of "cloud hosting". A real cloud website hosting environment would split the tasks at hand between independent sets of hosting servers in a cluster, which are dedicated to attending different web hosting services (electronic mail, disk space, stats, DNS, databases, hosting CP, etc.) So, the file hosting solution is only a brand of a storage space hosting service, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even near.

- Image hosting: akin to file hosting; specific corporations provide a hosting solution for images exclusively. This hosting brand is good if you desire to share a vast amount of images with friends or acquaintances since the solution is mostly free of cost. You will get a random link for each picture or album and you can then share this link. As with the file storage solution, .html and .php files are not supported, so the solution cannot be utilized for sites.

- E-mail hosting: a service devoted to tackling your mailbox accounts. Some vendors offer hosting services for sites, but do not supply an e-mail service. If you wish to open an email address with your domain name but do not wish to run a website, then the e-mail hosting service is what you need. You can set up email mailbox accounts and administer them, but there will be no hosting solution for the domains. The email hosting service involves incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP mail servers.

- Video hosting: this solution enables you to upload and share video files. You can either share a link to a given video clip, or you can embed the video in your website that is hosted elsewhere. The advantage of availing of this method instead of uploading the video in a hosting account is that the video brings about a specific amount of CPU load, so with a bunch of video files and several hundred website viewers, you may have trouble with your site hosting reserves. Embedding the video will enable you to manage as many video files as you desire without worrying about system quotas.

- Web page hosting: this is the solution that you need if you wish to run a website. To some extent, it involves all of the aforesaid hosting brands since, along with your websites, you can also host pictures and files, you can keep databases and email aliases, upload video clips, etc. At Host Mates, for instance, you can take a glance at web hosting and dedicated web hosting solutions that permit you to have all of the aforesaid solutions in one single place. There may be restrictions depending on the type of hosting service that you've settled on - a free hosting package, a paid shared hosting account, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your web space hosting plan may be better or worse compared with the usual e-mail/file/video/image hosting plans that are intended for particular web content only.