Categories of hosting solutions

A hosting solution involves stockpiling and/or sharing given content on a hosting server managed by a website hosting vendor. There are various types of hosting services used for different ends, so let's have a gaze at them. Thus, you can conclude what you want, based on whether you desire to run a web site, mail addresses, or to share files with mates and colleagues.

- File hosting: a solution provided by given providers, which allows you to share enormous files. These could be disk images, movies, audio files, archived files, etc. This solution is also known as file storage, and its only function is to share files, since it does not offer website 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 view a list of all the files in a directory, but you will not be able to open .html or .php website files in your web browser. Free file storage services are frequently supported by exhibiting ads next to the download links, while a timer compels you to wait for a given spell 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 limitations as to how many files you can upload/download straight away, and also there is no restriction as far as the download speed and the file size are concerned.

At the moment, with the help of the cPanel hosting merchants, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more trendy "cloud hosting". This is a totally mistaken interpretation of the actual meaning of "cloud hosting". An actual cloud website hosting system would allocate the tasks at hand between different sets of web hosting servers in a cluster, which are dedicated to serving different web site hosting services (electronic mail, storage space, statistics, DNS, databases, web space 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: resembling file hosting; given vendors offer a hosting service for pictures only. This hosting type is appropriate if you want to share a vast quantity of pictures with mates or acquaintances since the solution is commonly free of charge. You will obtain a randomly generated link for each and every pic 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 websites.

- E-mail hosting: a service devoted to managing your e-mail box accounts. Some corporations offer web space hosting services for web pages, but do not provide an email service. If you would like to manage a mail address with your domain name but do not wish to possess a website, then the email hosting service is what you need. You can open email address accounts and manage them, but there will be no web solution for the domains. The email hosting solution includes incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP email servers.

- Video hosting: this solution permits you to upload and share video files. You can either share a link to a given video file, or you can embed the video file in your web page that is hosted somewhere else. The advantage of availing of this method instead of uploading the video clip in a web hosting account is that the video clip creates a particular amount of central processing unit load, so with a couple of video clips and a few hundred site visitors, you may have trouble with your website hosting quotas. Embedding the video will enable you to run as many videos as you wish without worrying about system supplies.

- Web site hosting: this is the service that you need if you desire to run a web site. To a certain extent, it consists of all of the aforementioned hosting forms since, along with your sites, you can also host pictures and files, you can run databases and mail address accounts, upload video files, etc. At Heartland Web Hosting, for instance, you can have a gaze at web hosting and dedicated web server hosting services that allow you to get all of the abovementioned services in one single location. There may be limitations depending on the type of hosting service that you've picked - a free hosting package, a paid shared hosting plan, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your site hosting package may be better or worse compared to the customary email/file/video/image hosting packages that are conceived for particular content exclusively.