Categories of hosting services

A hosting solution implies saving and/or sharing specific content on a web server handled by a web hosting provider. There are different forms of hosting services used for various ends, so let's survey them. Doing so, you can conclude what you want, based on whether you desire to run a web site, mail addresses, or to share files with chums and associates.

- File hosting: a solution supplied by some file storage providers, which lets you share large files. These could be disk images, films, audio files, archived documents, and so on. This solution is also known as file storage, and its only objective is to share files, since it does not offer site uploading. The moment the files are uploaded, you will either obtain a randomly generated download link for each of them, or you will be able to explore a list of all the files in a directory, but you will be unable to load .html or .php web site files in your browser. Free file hosting accounts are frequently supported by exhibiting adverts next to the download links, while a timer forces you to await a particular amount of time to observe them. A given file can be downloaded with limited speed. If you run a paid file hosting plan, there are no restrictions as to how many files you can upload/download instantly, and also there is no restriction with regard to the download speed or the file size.

At present, with the help of the cPanel hosting traders, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more stylish "cloud hosting". This is a completely mistaken interpretation of the actual meaning of "cloud hosting". An actual cloud website hosting system would allot the load between individual bunches of servers in a cluster, which are devoted to serving various web space hosting services (email, disk space, statistics, DNS, databases, web hosting CP, and so on.) So, the file hosting service is merely a brand of a storage space hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even near.

- Image hosting: akin to file hosting; specific providers offer a hosting service for images exclusively. This hosting type is suitable if you desire to share a huge number of pictures with chums or partners since the service is typically free of cost. You will obtain a randomly generated link for each and every picture or album and you can then share this link. As with the file hosting solution, .html and .php files are not compatible, so the solution cannot be utilized for web pages.

- E-mail hosting: a solution devoted to handling your email box accounts. Some firms provide hosting services for websites, but do not provide an e-mail solution. If you desire to own an e-mail address with your domain name but do not want to possess a web site, then the email hosting service is what you want. You can set up mailbox accounts and manage them, but there will be no web service for the domains. The e-mail hosting service includes incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP servers.

- Video hosting: this service enables you to upload and share video files. You can either share a link to a specific video clip, or you can embed the video file in your web site that is hosted elsewhere. The benefit of using this method instead of uploading the video in a web hosting account is that the video brings about a certain amount of central processing unit load, so with several video files and several hundred website viewers, you may have a problem with your web hosting supplies. Embedding the video file will permit you to keep as many video clips as you desire without worrying about system quotas.

- Website hosting: this is the solution that you require if you desire to have a website. To some extent, it consists of all of the aforementioned hosting groups since, along with your websites, you can also host images and files, you can create databases and mail address accounts, upload video clips, and so on. At Exclusive Hosting, for instance, you can have a glance at web hosting and dedicated web server hosting solutions that permit you to have all of the abovementioned services in a single location. There may be limits based on the form of hosting service that you've settled on - a free hosting account, a paid shared hosting account, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your web page hosting plan may be better or worse compared to the normal e-mail/file/video/image hosting packages that are designed for specific web content only.