Forms of hosting services

A hosting service applies to stockpiling and/or sharing specific content on a web server run by a hosting company. There are different categories of hosting services utilized for different purposes, so let's explore them. In that way, you can decide what you need, based on whether you'd like to build a website, mail aliases, or to share files with pals and acquaintances.

- File hosting: a solution made available by particular file storage providers, which allows you to share bulky files. These could be disk images, motion pictures, audio files, archived files, and so on. This service is also known as file storage, and its only purpose is to share files, since it does not offer web site uploading. Once 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 files in your browser. Free-of-charge file hosting packages are frequently supported by showing adverts beside the download links, while a timer obliges you to await a certain stretch of time to observe them. A single file can be downloaded with restricted speed. If you get a paid file storage account, there are no limits as to how many files you can upload/download right away, and also there is no limitation in regard to the download speed or the file size.

At present, with the help of the cPanel hosting suppliers, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more modern "cloud hosting". This is a thoroughly twisted explanation of the real connotation of "cloud hosting". A real cloud website hosting environment would share the tasks at hand between independent groups of hosting servers in a cluster, which are dedicated to attending various webspace hosting services (mail, data storage, stats, DNS, databases, hosting Control Panel, etc.) So, the file hosting solution is merely a type of a storage space hosting service, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even close.

- Image hosting: similar to file hosting; specific suppliers offer a hosting solution for pictures only. This hosting variant is appropriate if you want to share an enormous number of pics with friends or colleagues since the service is mostly free. You will receive a random link for each and every image or album and you can subsequently share this link. As with the file hosting solution, .html and .php files are not supported, so the service cannot be used for sites.

- Email hosting: a service dedicated to taking care of your mail aliases. Some distributors offer web page hosting solutions for sites, but do not provide an e-mail hosting service. If you desire to keep an email address with your domain name but do not want to run a web site, then the email hosting service is what you want. You can open email box accounts and manage them, but there will be no hosting service for the domains. The email hosting solution includes incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP mail servers.

- Video hosting: this solution permits you to upload and share video clips. You can either share a link to a certain video file, or you can embed the video in your site that is hosted elsewhere. The benefit of using this approach instead of uploading the video in a hosting account is that the video clip brings about a given amount of central processing unit load, so with a few video files and a few hundred web site visitors, you may have difficulty with your web space hosting quotas. Embedding the video file will allow you to possess as many videos as you want to without worrying about system resources.

- Web hosting: this is the solution that you need if you want to keep a web site. To a certain extent, it encompasses all of the aforementioned hosting variants since, along with your web pages, you can also host pics and files, you can set up databases and e-mail aliases, upload video clips, and so on. At Smartest Media, for example, you can take a gaze at web hosting and dedicated hosting plans that enable you to have all of the aforesaid solutions in one single location. There may be restrictions depending on the type of hosting solution that you've opted for - a free hosting package, a paid shared hosting package, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your web page hosting plan may be better or worse compared to the regular email/file/video/image hosting accounts that are purposed for particular content solely.