Forms of hosting services

A hosting service pertains to storing and/or sharing certain content on a hosting server managed by a hosting distributor. There are various kinds of hosting services used for different ends, so let's study them. Doing so, you can determine what you need, based on whether you wish to build a web portal, e-mail addresses, or to share files with buddies and colleagues.

- File hosting: a solution distributed by given firms, which enables you to share huge files. These could be disk images, movies, audio files, archived documents, and so on. This solution is also known as file storage, and its sole goal is to share files, since it does not support 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 read a record of all the files in a directory, but you will be unable to open .html or .php website files in your browser. Free-of-cost file hosting plans frequently include advertisements by the download links, while a timer compels you to wait for a particular interval of time to perceive them. A single file can be downloaded with restricted speed. If you get a paid file hosting package, there are no limitations as to how many files you can upload/download at once, 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 companies, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more fashionable "cloud hosting". This is a completely amiss explanation of the real connotation of "cloud hosting". A real cloud website hosting environment would share the workload between autonomous stacks of web hosting servers in a cluster, which are dedicated to serving miscellaneous web page hosting services (electronic mail, data storage, statistics, DNS, databases, hosting CP, and so on.) So, the file hosting solution is simply a brand of a disk storage hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even close.

- Image hosting: resembling file hosting; specific corporations offer a hosting solution for pictures only. This hosting kind is appropriate if you want to share an enormous number of images with pals or partners since the solution is typically free of cost. You will obtain a random link for each and every picture or album and you can then share this link. As with the file storage service, .html and .php files are not compatible, so the solution cannot be used for sites.

- E-mail hosting: a service dedicated to handling your email addresses. Some corporations offer hosting solutions for web pages, but do not provide an email solution. If you would like to possess a mail address with your domain name but do not wish to possess a website, then the email hosting service is what you want. You can set up mailbox accounts and administer them, but there will be no web service for the domains. The email hosting solution involves incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP email servers.

- Video hosting: this service allows you to upload and share video clips. You can either share a link to a certain video, or you can embed the video in your website that is hosted somewhere else. The advantage of availing of this approach instead of uploading the video in a hosting account is that the video file generates a specific amount of CPU load, so with a handful of video files and several hundred web site visitors, you may have difficulty with your website hosting supplies. Embedding the video clip will enable you to run as many videos as you desire without worrying about system resources.

- Web site hosting: this is the solution that you need if you would like to have a website. To a certain degree, it comprises all of the aforementioned hosting varieties since, along with your websites, you can also host images and files, you can create databases and mailbox accounts, upload video files, and so on. At Heartland Web Hosting, for instance, you can explore web hosting and dedicated server hosting solutions that allow you to have all of the abovementioned solutions in one location. There may be restrictions depending on the sort of hosting service that you've opted for - a free hosting plan, a paid shared hosting account, a VPS or a dedicated server. Depending on that, your website hosting plan may be better or worse compared to the normal e-mail/file/video/image hosting plans that are purposed for specific content only.