Categories of hosting services

A hosting service applies to keeping and/or sharing certain content on a hosting server hosted by a website hosting distributor. There are various kinds of hosting services used for different ends, so let's have a glimpse at them. Thus, you can choose what you need, on the basis of whether you desire to have a web site, mails, or to share files with pals and acquaintances.

- File hosting: a solution furnished by particular companies, which lets you share enormous files. These could be disk images, films, audio files, archived documents, and so on. This solution is also known as file storage, and its sole aim is to share files, since it does not support website uploading. The moment the files are uploaded, you will either obtain a randomly created download link for each of them, or you will be able to explore a register of all the files in a directory, but you will be unable to view .html or .php website files in your browser. Free file storage plans often include ads next to the download links, while a timer obliges you to await a certain interval of time to perceive them. A single file can be downloaded with restricted speed. If you buy a paid file storage account, there are no restrictions as to how many files you can upload/download straight away, and also there is no restriction when it comes to the download speed or the file size.

Nowadays, with the assistance of the cPanel hosting traders, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more stylish "cloud hosting". This is a completely imprecise explanation of the real definition of "cloud hosting". A real cloud website hosting environment would divide the tasks at hand between separate sets of servers in a cluster, which are committed to serving different webspace hosting services (email, disk space, statistics, DNS, databases, webspace hosting Control Panel, and so on.) So, the file hosting solution is merely a kind of a data storage hosting service, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even close.

- Image hosting: comparable with file hosting; specific distributors offer a hosting solution for images exclusively. This hosting kind is suitable if you wish to share a great amount of images with mates or acquaintances since the solution is typically free of charge. You will get a random link for 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 pages.

- E-mail hosting: a service devoted to taking care of your e-mail aliases. Some firms offer site hosting services for web pages, but do not provide an email hosting service. If you would like to own a mail address with your domain name but do not want to possess a web site, then the email hosting service is what you require. You can create e-mail address accounts and manage them, but there will be no hosting service for the domains. The email hosting service involves incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP email servers.

- Video hosting: this solution allows you to upload and share video clips. You can either share a link to a given video file, or you can embed the video in your website that is hosted elsewhere. The benefit of using this approach instead of uploading the video clip in a hosting account is that the video file creates a certain amount of CPU load, so with several videos and several hundred viewers, you may have difficulty with your web space hosting reserves. Embedding the video will allow you to administer as many video clips as you desire without bothering about system reserves.

- Web hosting: this is the solution that you need if you desire to own a website. To a certain degree, it involves all of the aforesaid hosting groups since, along with your web sites, you can also host pictures and files, you can set up databases and mail addresses, upload videos, and so on. At Lonex, for example, you can have a peek at web hosting and dedicated web hosting plans that enable you to get all of the aforementioned solutions in one single location. There may be limitations depending on the kind of hosting solution that you've selected - a free hosting plan, a paid shared hosting account, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your web page hosting package may be better or worse juxtaposed to the customary e-mail/file/video/image hosting packages that are tailored for particular content exclusively.