Categories of hosting services

A hosting solution applies to keeping and/or sharing specific web content on a web hosting server run by a web hosting provider. There are various classes of hosting services used for various ends, so let's survey these. Doing so, you can pick what you want, on the basis of whether you'd like to set up a web page, email addresses, or to share files with mates and partners.

- File hosting: a service offered by given providers, which enables you to share enormous files. These could be disk images, films, audio files, archives, etc. This service is also known as file storage, and its only goal is to share files, since it does not support web page uploading. Once the files are uploaded, you will either receive an accidentally created download link for each of them, or you will be able to view a record 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 hosting plans often involve adverts beside the download links, while a timer forces you to await a certain amount of time to see them. A single file can be downloaded with limited speed. If you have a paid file hosting plan, there are no limits as to how many files you can upload/download at once, and also there is no limit in regard to the download speed or the file size.

These days, with the help of the cPanel hosting merchandisers, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more voguish "cloud hosting". This is a thoroughly erroneous explanation of the real connotation of "cloud hosting". An actual cloud website hosting system would apportion the workload between independent groups of hosting servers in a cluster, which are dedicated to serving different website hosting services (mail, storage space, stats, DNS, databases, web page hosting Control Panel, etc.) So, the file hosting service is simply a type of a disk space hosting solution, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even close.

- Image hosting: similar to file hosting; specific distributors provide a hosting solution for pictures exclusively. This hosting kind is suitable if you wish to share a huge number of images with mates or partners since the service is mostly free. You will get a random link for each and every picture or album and you can then share this link. As with the file hosting service, .html and .php files are not compatible, so the service cannot be used for websites.

- Email hosting: a solution committed to managing your e-mail accounts. Some suppliers provide web page hosting services for sites, but do not offer an e-mail solution. If you wish to set up an e-mail address with your domain name but do not wish to keep a website, then the email hosting solution is what you want. You can open mailbox accounts and manage them, but there will be no web service for the domains. The e-mail hosting solution involves incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP mail servers.

- Video hosting: this solution permits you to upload and share video clips. You can either share a link to a given video, or you can embed the video clip in your site that is hosted somewhere else. The advantage of utilizing this method in lieu of uploading the video in a hosting account is that the video creates a specific amount of CPU load, so with a few videos and a few hundred visitors, you may have a problem with your web site hosting reserves. Embedding the video file will enable you to manage as many video clips as you want without worrying about system supplies.

- Web hosting: this is the solution that you need if you wish to keep a site. To a certain degree, it contains all of the abovementioned hosting types since, along with your web sites, you can also host images and files, you can set up databases and email mailbox accounts, upload video files, etc. At NTC Hosting, for example, you can see web hosting and dedicated web hosting solutions that enable you to have all of the aforementioned solutions in one single place. There may be restrictions depending on the form of hosting service that you've picked - a free hosting account, a paid shared hosting package, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your website hosting package may be better or worse juxtaposed to the typical e-mail/file/video/image hosting accounts that are conceived for particular content only.