Classes of hosting solutions

A hosting solution includes keeping and/or sharing specific content on a web server run by a website hosting provider. There are different kinds of hosting services utilized for various aims, so let's take a glance at them. Thus, you can decide what you need, depending on whether you wish to have a website, mailbox accounts, or to share files with mates and associates.

- File hosting: a solution offered by certain web hosts, which lets you share immense files. These could be disk images, movies, audio files, archived files, etc. This solution is also known as file storage, and its only purpose is to share files, since it does not support website uploading. As soon as the files are uploaded, you will either obtain an accidentally generated download link for each of them, or you will be able to view a list of all the files in a directory, but you will not be able to see .html or .php website files in your web browser. Free-of-charge file hosting services are frequently supported by showing adverts by the download links, while a timer forces you to wait for a particular interval of time to see them. A single file can be downloaded with limited speed. If you possess a paid file hosting account, there are no restrictions as to how many files you can upload/download straight away, and also there is no limitation as far as the download speed and the file size are concerned.

At the moment, with the help of the cPanel hosting companies, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more modish "cloud hosting". This is a completely inaccurate interpretation of the literal meaning of "cloud hosting". A real cloud website hosting platform would divide the tasks at hand between autonomous groups of servers in a cluster, which are committed to serving different web hosting services (mail, disk space, stats, DNS, databases, web site hosting Control Panel, etc.) So, the file hosting service is merely a type of a disk space hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even near.

- Image hosting: close to file hosting; certain providers offer a hosting solution for pictures exclusively. This hosting brand is suitable if you wish to share a large quantity of images with buddies or acquaintances since the solution is commonly free. You will get a randomly generated link for each and every image or album and you can then share this link. As with the file hosting solution, .html and .php files are not supported, so the solution cannot be used for web sites.

- E-mail hosting: a service committed to administering your e-mail aliases. Some distributors provide site hosting solutions for websites, but do not provide an email hosting service. If you desire to set up an e-mail address with your domain name but do not desire to have a site, then the email hosting solution is what you need. You can set up e-mail 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 e-mail servers.

- Video hosting: this solution enables you to upload and share videos. You can either share a link to a particular video file, or you can embed the video in your web page that is hosted somewhere else. The benefit of utilizing this method instead of uploading the video file in a hosting account is that the video clip generates a given amount of CPU load, so with a couple of video files and a few hundred site visitors, you may have trouble with your webspace hosting supplies. Embedding the video file will allow you to utilize as many video clips as you want to without bothering about system supplies.

- Website hosting: this is the service that you require if you want to keep a website. To a certain extent, it comprises all of the aforesaid hosting groups since, along with your web pages, you can also host pictures and files, you can keep databases and e-mail box accounts, upload videos, etc. At Affiliate Web Hosting, for example, you can have a gaze at web hosting and dedicated server hosting solutions that enable you to have all of the abovementioned services in one place. There may be restrictions depending on the type of hosting solution that you've opted for - a free hosting account, a paid shared hosting plan, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your webspace hosting package may be better or worse compared to the standard e-mail/file/video/image hosting accounts that are meant for specific web content only.