Groups of hosting services
A hosting service applies to storing and/or sharing given content on a hosting server administered by a web hosting distributor. There are different sorts of hosting services used for different purposes, so let's have a gaze at them. In this way, you can conclude what you need, on the basis of whether you'd like to run a site, mailbox accounts, or to share files with comrades and partners.
- File hosting: a service provided by some providers, 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 function is to share files, since it does not offer web page uploading. Once the files are uploaded, you will either obtain an accidentally generated download link for each of them, or you will be able to examine an index of all the files in a directory, but you will be unable to load .html or .php web site files in your browser. Free file storage services frequently include advertisements beside the download links, while a timer makes you await a particular span of time to see them. A single file can be downloaded with restricted speed. If you own a paid file hosting account, there are no limitations as to how many files you can upload/download immediately, and also there is no limit with regard to the download speed or the file size.
At the moment, with the assistance of the cPanel hosting merchandisers, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more fashionable "cloud hosting". This is an entirely wrong explanation of the actual definition of "cloud hosting". An actual cloud website hosting platform would split the tasks at hand between independent groups of servers in a cluster, which are committed to serving miscellaneous webspace hosting services (electronic mail, web space, stats, DNS, databases, web space hosting CP, and so on.) So, the file hosting solution is merely a type of a disk space hosting service, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even close.
- Image hosting: comparable with file hosting; given firms offer a hosting service for images solely. This hosting kind is suitable if you wish to share a big quantity of images with mates or acquaintances since the service is generally free of cost. You will receive a random link for each and every pic or album and you can subsequently share this link. As with the file storage service, .html and .php files are not compatible, so the service cannot be used for sites.
- E-mail hosting: a service dedicated to tackling your e-mails. Some vendors offer web site hosting services for web pages, but do not supply an e-mail solution. If you wish to get a mail address with your domain name but do not want to run a web site, then the e-mail hosting service is what you want. You can create email box accounts and manage them, but there will be no web service for the domains. The e-mail hosting solution involves incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP servers.
- Video hosting: this solution allows you to upload and share video files. You can either share a link to a certain video file, or you can embed the video clip in your web page that is hosted somewhere else. The advantage of utilizing this method instead of uploading the video clip in a hosting account is that the video file produces a certain amount of CPU load, so with a couple of video clips and several hundred viewers, you may have a problem with your hosting quotas. Embedding the video clip will allow you to own as many videos as you would like without hassling about system reserves.
- Web site hosting: this is the service that you require if you want to own a web site. To some degree, it includes all of the aforementioned hosting brands since, along with your websites, you can also host pics and files, you can create databases and e-mail box accounts, upload video clips, etc. At kuwait.gr, for example, you can have a peek at web hosting and dedicated hosting services that allow you to have all of the aforementioned services in one place. There may be limits depending on the type of hosting solution that you've selected - a free hosting plan, a paid shared hosting plan, a VPS or a dedicated server. Depending on that, your web hosting plan may be better or worse juxtaposed to the ordinary e-mail/file/video/image hosting plans that are designed for particular content exclusively.