Groups of hosting services

A hosting service implies keeping and/or sharing specific web content on a web hosting server handled by a web hosting distributor. There are different groups of hosting services used for different ends, so let's have a gaze at them. Doing so, you can choose what you want, based on whether you desire to launch a site, mailbox accounts, or to share files with buddies and colleagues.

- File hosting: a service made available by various web hosts, which allows you to share immense files. These could be disk images, movies, audio files, archived files, and so on. This solution is also known as file storage, and its only purpose is to share files, since it does not offer website uploading. The moment the files are uploaded, you will either obtain an accidentally created download link for each of them, or you will be able to view a list of all the files in a directory, but you will be unable to open .html or .php web site files in your web browser. Free-of-charge file hosting plans are frequently supported by displaying ads beside the download links, while a timer makes you wait for a certain span of time to see them. A given file can be downloaded with limited speed. If you get a paid file hosting package, there are no limitations as to how many files you can upload/download instantly, and also there is no limitation in regard to the download speed or the file size.

Now, with the assistance of the cPanel hosting wholesalers, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more modern "cloud hosting". This is an entirely distorted explanation of the actual meaning of "cloud hosting". A real cloud website hosting environment would apportion the workload between autonomous stacks of web hosting servers in a cluster, which are committed to serving various web space hosting services (electronic mail, data storage, stats, DNS, databases, web site hosting CP, and so on.) So, the file hosting solution is merely a sort of a disk storage hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even close.

- Image hosting: comparable with file hosting; certain firms provide a hosting service for images only. This hosting brand is good if you want to share a huge quantity of pics with chums or colleagues since the service is commonly free. You will get a random link for each image or album and you can then share this link. As with the file storage solution, .html and .php files are not compatible, so the service cannot be utilized for web pages.

- E-mail hosting: a service devoted to managing your mail aliases. Some suppliers offer hosting solutions for websites, but do not offer an e-mail solution. If you desire to create an e-mail address with your domain name but do not want to own a web site, then the email hosting solution is what you require. You can set up email address accounts and manage them, but there will be no hosting service for the domains. The e-mail hosting service includes incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP mail servers.

- Video hosting: this solution enables you to upload and share videos. You can either share a link to a given video clip, or you can embed the video in your web page that is hosted somewhere else. The benefit of using this method instead of uploading the video file in a hosting account is that the video clip brings about a given amount of CPU load, so with a bunch of videos and a few hundred web page visitors, you may have a problem with your web space hosting reserves. Embedding the video will allow you to run as many videos as you want without hassling about system supplies.

- Web page hosting: this is the solution that you require if you wish to have a web site. To a certain extent, it encompasses all of the abovementioned hosting varieties since, along with your websites, you can also host images and files, you can keep databases and e-mail addresses, upload video clips, and so on. At Net For Africa, for example, you can have a look at web hosting and dedicated hosting plans that enable you to have all of the aforesaid solutions in one location. There may be restrictions based on the form of hosting service that you've opted for - a free hosting package, a paid shared hosting account, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your hosting package may be better or worse compared to the conventional email/file/video/image hosting accounts that are intended for specific content only.