Categories of hosting solutions

A hosting service implies hoarding and/or sharing certain content on a hosting server hosted by a web hosting supplier. There are various types of hosting services used for different purposes, so let's have a glimpse at them. Thus, you can determine what you need, on the basis of whether you desire to run a site, email address accounts, or to share files with chums and associates.

- File hosting: a solution furnished by given companies, which permits you to share immense files. These could be disk images, movies, audio files, archived files, and so on. This service is also known as file storage, and its only function is to share files, since it does not offer site uploading. As soon as the files are uploaded, you will either receive a randomly generated download link for each of them, or you will be able to read a record of all the files in a directory, but you will not be able to view .html or .php web files in your web browser. Free file storage packages are often supported by exhibiting ads next to the download links, while a timer compels you to wait for a given spell of time to view them. A single file can be downloaded with limited speed. If you get a paid file storage account, there are no limitations as to how many files you can upload/download immediately, and also there is no restriction as far as the download speed and the file size are concerned.

Nowadays, with the help of the cPanel hosting suppliers, "file hosting" is being renamed to the more stylish "cloud hosting". This is a completely wrong explanation of the literal definition of "cloud hosting". A real cloud website hosting platform would allocate the tasks at hand between independent hosts of web hosting servers in a cluster, which are devoted to attending various web space hosting services (email, web space, statistics, DNS, databases, site hosting Control Panel, etc.) So, the file hosting solution is just a sort of a data storage hosting service, not a cloud hosting one. It's not even near.

- Image hosting: similar to file hosting; certain providers offer a hosting service for pictures exclusively. This hosting brand is appropriate if you desire to share an immense quantity of images with buddies or acquaintances since the solution is generally free of charge. You will get a randomly generated link for each image or album and you can subsequently share this link. As with the file hosting service, .html and .php files are not supported, so the solution cannot be used for web sites.

- E-mail hosting: a service committed to managing your email address accounts. Some providers provide web site hosting services for sites, but do not supply an e-mail hosting solution. If you want to manage an e-mail address with your domain name but do not want to keep a web site, then the email hosting solution is what you require. You can create mail accounts and manage them, but there will be no hosting service for the domains. The email hosting service involves incoming POP/IMAP and outgoing SMTP e-mail servers.

- Video hosting: this service enables you to upload and share video files. You can either share a link to a certain video, or you can embed the video in your site that is hosted somewhere else. The advantage of using this approach in lieu of uploading the video file in a web hosting account is that the video file produces a certain amount of central processing unit load, so with several video clips and several hundred web page visitors, you may have a problem with your website hosting resources. Embedding the video clip will permit you to administer as many videos as you want without bothering about system reserves.

- Website hosting: this is the solution that you need if you would like to own a web site. To some extent, it involves all of the aforementioned hosting groups since, along with your websites, you can also host images and files, you can keep databases and email addresses, upload videos, and so on. At BLUE RIBBON HOSTING, for example, you can take a glimpse at web hosting and dedicated hosting services that enable you to have all of the abovementioned services in one single place. There may be limits depending on the form of hosting solution that you've opted for - a free hosting account, a paid shared hosting plan, a VPS or a dedicated server. Based on that, your web hosting plan may be better or worse in comparison with the usual email/file/video/image hosting plans that are planned for particular web content exclusively.