Classes of hosting services

A hosting solution refers to depositing and/or sharing specific content on a server managed by a hosting distributor. There are various types of hosting services used for various goals, so let's have a peek at them. In this way, you can decide what you need, based on whether you wish to set up a blog, e-mail address accounts, or to share files with pals and acquaintances.

- File hosting: a solution furnished by particular web hosts, which enables you to share large files. These could be disk images, movies, audio files, archives, etc. This solution is also known as file storage, and its sole purpose is to share files, since it does not support web page uploading. As soon as the files are uploaded, you will either obtain a randomly created download link for each of them, or you will be able to see a table of all the files in a directory, but you will be unable to load .html or .php web files in your web browser. Free-of-cost file storage services are often supported by showing ads next to the download links, while a timer makes you wait for a certain amount of time to perceive them. A given file can be downloaded with limited speed. If you have a paid file hosting account, there are no restrictions as to how many files you can upload/download immediately, and also there is no limit in regard to the download speed or the file size.

At present, with the assistance of the cPanel hosting merchants, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more voguish "cloud hosting". This is a thoroughly inappropriate explanation of the literal connotation of "cloud hosting". An actual cloud website hosting environment would split the tasks at hand between different bunches of web hosting servers in a cluster, which are committed to attending miscellaneous site hosting services (electronic mail, disk space, stats, DNS, databases, web hosting Control Panel, and so on.) So, the file hosting service is only a type of a disk space hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even near.

- Image hosting: similar to file hosting; certain distributors provide a hosting service for pictures only. This hosting kind is appropriate if you wish to share a vast amount of pictures with pals or colleagues since the solution is usually free of cost. You will get a random link for each and every image or album and you can then share this link. As with the file storage service, .html and .php files are not compatible, so the service cannot be used for web sites.

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

- Video hosting: this solution allows you to upload and share videos. You can either share a link to a given video, or you can embed the video clip in your site that is hosted elsewhere. The advantage of availing of this approach instead of uploading the video clip in a web hosting account is that the video clip generates a given amount of CPU load, so with a handful of video files and several hundred site visitors, you may have trouble with your webspace hosting supplies. Embedding the video will allow you to keep as many video clips as you wish without bothering about system resources.

- Website hosting: this is the solution that you need if you would like to keep a site. To some extent, it involves all of the aforesaid hosting types since, along with your web sites, you can also host images and files, you can run databases and email box accounts, upload video clips, and so on. At AIDA Host, for example, you can have a look at web hosting and dedicated web hosting accounts that allow you to get all of the aforesaid services in one single place. There may be limits based on the form of hosting service that you've selected - a free hosting plan, a paid shared hosting package, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your web hosting account may be better or worse compared with the regular email/file/video/image hosting packages that are purposed for specific web content exclusively.