Types of hosting solutions

A hosting solution includes storing and/or sharing particular content on a web server run by a website hosting provider. There are various kinds of hosting services utilized for different aims, so let's take a look at them. Thus, you can pick what you want, based on whether you desire to set up a blog, e-mail address accounts, or to share files with chums and colleagues.

- File hosting: a solution distributed by given hosts, which lets you share immense 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 support web site 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 examine a table of all the files in a directory, but you will be unable to view .html or .php web files in your web browser. Free-of-charge file hosting services are often supported by exhibiting advertisements next to the download links, while a timer compels you to await a certain amount 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 limitations as to how many files you can upload/download instantly, and also there is no restriction in regard to the download speed or the file size.

Nowadays, with the help of the cPanel hosting merchants, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more stylish "cloud hosting". This is an entirely unsuitable interpretation of the actual connotation of "cloud hosting". A real cloud website hosting platform would allocate the workload between independent sets of web hosting servers in a cluster, which are committed to serving miscellaneous web hosting services (mail, disk space, statistics, DNS, databases, site hosting CP, etc.) So, the file hosting service is just a brand of a storage space hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even close.

- Image hosting: similar to file hosting; specific corporations offer a hosting solution for pictures only. This hosting brand is appropriate if you desire to share an immense amount of images with friends or partners since the solution is commonly free of charge. You will get a random link for each pic or album and you can subsequently share this link. As with the file storage solution, .html and .php files are not compatible, so the solution cannot be utilized for web sites.

- Email hosting: a solution devoted to handling your electronic mail accounts. Some suppliers offer website hosting services for sites, but do not provide an email hosting service. If you want to own an email address with your domain name but do not want to own a site, then the email hosting service is what you need. You can set up e-mail address accounts and administer them, but there will be no hosting service for the domains. The e-mail hosting solution involves incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP email servers.

- Video hosting: this solution permits you to upload and share video files. You can either share a link to a given video, or you can embed the video clip in your web site that is hosted elsewhere. The advantage of availing of this method instead of uploading the video clip in a hosting account is that the video clip creates a particular amount of central processing unit load, so with a few videos and a few hundred web site viewers, you may have a problem with your site hosting supplies. Embedding the video file will permit you to run as many videos as you would like without hassling about system reserves.

- Web page hosting: this is the service that you need if you desire to own a website. To a certain degree, it comprises all of the aforementioned hosting brands since, along with your web pages, you can also host images and files, you can set up databases and emails, upload video clips, and so on. At AND-GATE, for example, you can observe web hosting and dedicated server hosting accounts that allow you to get all of the abovementioned solutions in a single location. There may be limitations based on the form of hosting solution that you've settled on - a free hosting plan, a paid shared hosting plan, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your web hosting plan may be better or worse compared with the normal e-mail/file/video/image hosting packages that are purposed for specific content solely.