Groups of hosting services

A hosting service entails keeping and/or sharing certain web content on a server administered by a website hosting vendor. There are various varieties of hosting services utilized for different purposes, so let's have a peek at them. In that way, you can choose what you need, depending on whether you desire to build a web portal, e-mail addresses, or to share files with buddies and associates.

- File hosting: a service offered by certain hosts, which allows you to share enormous files. These could be disk images, movies, audio files, archived files, etc. This service is also known as file storage, and its single aim is to share files, since it does not support web page uploading. As soon as the files are uploaded, you will either get a randomly generated download link for each of them, or you will be able to view a roll of all the files in a directory, but you will not be able to load .html or .php web files in your web browser. Free file storage plans frequently include adverts next to the download links, while a timer forces you to await a specific period of time to observe them. A single file can be downloaded with restricted speed. If you buy a paid file hosting package, there are no limits as to how many files you can upload/download instantly, and also there is no limitation as far as the download speed and the file size are concerned.

At present, with the assistance of the cPanel hosting retailers, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more modern "cloud hosting". This is a thoroughly incongruous interpretation of the actual connotation of "cloud hosting". An actual cloud website hosting platform would split the workload between separate hosts of web hosting servers in a cluster, which are devoted to attending different website hosting services (mail, web space, statistics, DNS, databases, CP, and so on.) So, the file hosting solution is just a brand of a disk storage hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even near.

- Image hosting: akin to file hosting; specific providers provide a hosting service for pictures solely. This hosting brand is suitable if you want to share a great quantity of images with pals or associates since the solution is generally free. You will get a random link for each 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 service cannot be utilized for sites.

- E-mail hosting: a solution dedicated to administering your email addresses. Some companies provide web space hosting services for web sites, but do not provide an email hosting service. If you wish to launch an e-mail address with your domain name but do not want to have a web site, then the e-mail hosting solution is what you need. You can set up email mailbox accounts and manage them, but there will be no hosting service for the domains. The e-mail hosting solution involves incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP servers.

- Video hosting: this solution enables you to upload and share video files. You can either share a link to a particular video clip, or you can embed the video clip in your site that is hosted somewhere else. The benefit of using this approach instead of uploading the video in a hosting account is that the video file produces a particular amount of CPU load, so with a few videos and a few hundred site viewers, you may have a hard time with your hosting reserves. Embedding the video will enable you to use as many video files as you want without worrying about system resources.

- Web hosting: this is the solution that you need if you wish to own a website. To some extent, it includes all of the aforesaid hosting types since, along with your web pages, you can also host images and files, you can have databases and e-mail box accounts, upload video files, etc. At Wantok Web Hosting, for example, you can take a glance at web hosting and dedicated hosting packages that enable you to get all of the aforesaid solutions in a single location. There may be limits depending on the kind of hosting solution that you've settled on - a free hosting package, a paid shared hosting plan, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your hosting plan may be better or worse compared to the ordinary e-mail/file/video/image hosting plans that are intended for specific web content only.