Classes of hosting services

A hosting service means hoarding and/or sharing certain content on a web hosting server run by a web hosting company. There are different types of hosting services used for different aims, so let's take a peek at these. In this way, you can pick what you need, based on whether you desire to establish a site, emails, or to share files with pals and colleagues.

- File hosting: a service offered by various companies, which permits you to share large files. These could be disk images, motion pictures, audio files, archived documents, and so on. This service is also known as file storage, and its sole designation is to share files, since it does not support web site uploading. The moment the files are uploaded, you will either get a randomly created download link for each of them, or you will be able to read a list of all the files in a directory, but you will not be able to see .html or .php web page files in your browser. Free file storage solutions often involve advertisements beside the download links, while a timer makes you wait for a certain interval of time to view them. A single file can be downloaded with limited speed. If you have a paid file hosting package, there are no limits as to how many files you can upload/download at once, and also there is no restriction in regard to the download speed or the file size.

At present, with the assistance of the cPanel hosting companies, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more faddish "cloud hosting". This is a totally inaccurate interpretation of the literal definition of "cloud hosting". A real cloud website hosting system would divide the tasks at hand between autonomous sets of servers in a cluster, which are committed to serving miscellaneous web hosting services (mail, storage space, stats, DNS, databases, web page hosting CP, etc.) So, the file hosting service is simply a type of a storage space hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even close.

- Image hosting: close to file hosting; certain companies provide a hosting service for images exclusively. This hosting variant is good if you want to share an immense number of pictures with friends or acquaintances since the solution is generally free. You will get a randomly generated link for each and every picture or album and you can subsequently share this link. As with the file hosting service, .html and .php files are not compatible, so the service cannot be used for web pages.

- Email hosting: a service devoted to managing your e-mail aliases. Some distributors offer web page hosting services for web sites, but do not provide an e-mail hosting service. If you want to create a mail address with your domain name but do not desire to possess a site, then the e-mail hosting service is what you need. You can set up mailbox accounts and manage them, but there will be no web solution for the domains. The e-mail hosting service includes incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP mail 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 clip in your website that is hosted somewhere else. The advantage of using this approach instead of uploading the video file in a hosting account is that the video clip produces a particular amount of CPU load, so with a handful of video files and a few hundred viewers, you may have a problem with your website hosting supplies. Embedding the video file will allow you to keep as many videos as you want without worrying about system resources.

- Web site hosting: this is the solution that you require if you desire to own a site. To a certain degree, it incorporates all of the aforesaid hosting varieties since, along with your websites, you can also host pictures and files, you can set up databases and emails, upload video files, and so on. At Thexyz Inc, for example, you can observe web hosting and dedicated hosting packages that permit you to have all of the aforesaid services in one place. There may be limitations based on the kind of hosting service that you've picked - a free hosting account, a paid shared hosting plan, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your website hosting account may be better or worse juxtaposed to the usual e-mail/file/video/image hosting accounts that are created for specific content solely.