Classes of hosting services

A hosting service means storing and/or sharing given content on a server hosted by a hosting company. There are different classes of hosting services used for various aims, so let's have a glance at them. Doing so, you can choose what you want, on the basis of whether you desire to build a site, e-mail addresses, or to share files with mates and associates.

- File hosting: a service provided by various hosts, which allows you to share bulky files. These could be disk images, motion pictures, audio files, archived documents, and so on. This service is also known as file storage, and its sole designation is to share files, since it does not support web page uploading. Once the files are uploaded, you will either obtain a randomly generated download link for each of them, or you will be able to view an index of all the files in a directory, but you will not be able to see .html or .php web site files in your browser. Free-of-cost file hosting accounts are frequently supported by displaying adverts by the download links, while a timer makes you wait for a given period of time to view them. A single file can be downloaded with restricted speed. If you own a paid file hosting account, there are no limits as to how many files you can upload/download right away, and also there is no limitation as far as the download speed and the file size are concerned.

These days, with the help of the cPanel hosting firms, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more stylish "cloud hosting". This is a totally distorted interpretation of the literal connotation of "cloud hosting". A real cloud website hosting system would apportion the workload between different stacks of hosting servers in a cluster, which are committed to attending various webspace hosting services (electronic mail, web space, statistics, DNS, databases, web page hosting Control Panel, etc.) So, the file hosting service is merely a sort of a disk space hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even close.

- Image hosting: akin to file hosting; specific providers offer a hosting service for pictures only. This hosting kind is suitable if you wish to share a big quantity of pictures with chums or colleagues since the service is usually free of cost. You will get a random link for each image or album and you can subsequently share this link. As with the file storage solution, .html and .php files are not supported, so the solution cannot be used for web pages.

- E-mail hosting: a solution dedicated to managing your e-mailbox accounts. Some suppliers offer web space hosting services for web sites, but do not provide an email service. If you desire to launch an e-mail address with your domain name but do not wish to keep a web site, then the email hosting solution is what you require. You can open email box accounts and manage them, but there will be no web solution for the domains. The email hosting service includes incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP mail servers.

- Video hosting: this solution enables you to upload and share video clips. You can either share a link to some video, or you can embed the video file in your web page that is hosted elsewhere. The advantage of using this method in lieu of uploading the video in a web hosting account is that the video file creates a particular amount of central processing unit load, so with several video files and a few hundred site viewers, you may have trouble with your webspace hosting supplies. Embedding the video file will enable you to use as many video files as you want without hassling about system reserves.

- Website hosting: this is the solution that you need if you wish to run a site. To some degree, it encompasses all of the aforesaid hosting variants since, along with your websites, you can also host pics and files, you can set up databases and email accounts, upload videos, etc. At Heartland Web Hosting, for example, you can take a look at web hosting and dedicated web hosting packages that enable you to have all of the aforesaid services in a single place. There may be limits depending on the form of hosting service that you've selected - a free hosting account, a paid shared hosting plan, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your web page hosting package may be better or worse compared with the common e-mail/file/video/image hosting accounts that are planned for particular web content solely.