Groups of hosting solutions

A hosting solution entails stockpiling and/or sharing particular web content on a web server administered by a website hosting distributor. There are various varieties of hosting services used for various ends, so let's have a gaze at these. Doing so, you can choose what you need, based on whether you desire to own a web site, e-mailbox accounts, or to share files with chums and associates.

- File hosting: a solution furnished by particular providers, which enables you to share huge files. These could be disk images, motion pictures, audio files, archives, etc. This service is also known as file storage, and its only designation is to share files, since it does not support web page uploading. Once the files are uploaded, you will either receive an accidentally generated download link for each of them, or you will be able to examine a roster of all the files in a directory, but you will be unable to see .html or .php web site files in your web browser. Free-of-cost file storage accounts frequently include ads by the download links, while a timer obliges you to wait for a specific amount of time to view them. A given file can be downloaded with restricted speed. If you buy a paid file storage package, there are no limits as to how many files you can upload/download at once, and also there is no restriction as far as the download speed and the file size are concerned.

These days, with the help of the cPanel hosting companies, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more stylish "cloud hosting". This is a completely inapt interpretation of the actual definition of "cloud hosting". A real cloud website hosting environment would allot the tasks at hand between separate groups of web hosting servers in a cluster, which are devoted to attending various web hosting services (mail, disk storage, stats, DNS, databases, web hosting Control Panel, etc.) So, the file hosting service is just a brand of a disk space hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even close.

- Image hosting: close to file hosting; some corporations provide a hosting service for pictures exclusively. This hosting type is suitable if you want to share a large amount of pics with mates or acquaintances since the solution is commonly free. You will get a randomly generated link for each and every image or album and you can subsequently share this link. As with the file storage service, .html and .php files are not supported, so the service cannot be used for web pages.

- Email hosting: a service committed to taking care of your e-mailbox accounts. Some providers provide web site hosting solutions for web sites, but do not offer an email hosting solution. If you wish to open an email address with your domain name but do not want to have a website, then the e-mail hosting service is what you require. You can create e-mail box accounts and manage them, but there will be no hosting solution for the domains. The e-mail hosting solution includes incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP mail servers.

- Video hosting: this service allows you to upload and share video files. You can either share a link to a given video clip, or you can embed the video file in your website that is hosted elsewhere. The advantage of using this approach instead of uploading the video file in a web hosting account is that the video clip generates a specific amount of CPU load, so with a couple of videos and a few hundred web site visitors, you may have a problem with your web space hosting supplies. Embedding the video file will allow you to possess as many video files as you want to without worrying about system reserves.

- Website hosting: this is the solution that you need if you desire to possess a site. To some degree, it includes all of the aforementioned hosting variants since, along with your web sites, you can also host pictures and files, you can set up databases and e-mail addresses, upload videos, etc. At el-wu, for instance, you can have a glimpse at web hosting and dedicated web server hosting accounts that enable you to get all of the aforesaid solutions in one single place. There may be limits depending on the type of hosting solution that you've chosen - a free hosting package, a paid shared hosting package, a VPS or a dedicated server. Depending on that, your site hosting plan may be better or worse compared to the ordinary e-mail/file/video/image hosting accounts that are devised for particular content only.