An explanation of web site hosting
The most standard and popularly availed of kind of web hosting is the shared web hosting service. It's a way to host your web site without having to know much about programming and administering a hosting server. Moreover, it's also the most economical type of web hosting and it's indeed affordable for everyone. Nevertheless, what is shared hosting?
What is shared website hosting?
As the name indicates, the shared web space hosting service is a type of service where plenty of customers share the resources of one and the same server. This indicates that all hosting server elements like CPU, hard disks, RAM, NICs etc. are split among the users whose accounts are on that very same server. This is normally made viable by setting up different accounts for the separate customers and fixing some limits and resource usage quotas for each of them. Those limits are set so as to hinder the customers from intervening with each other's accounts and, of course, to prevent the web hosting server from overburdening. Typically, shared web page hosting customers do not have root-level access to the web hosting server's config files, which essentially indicates that they do not have access to anything else on the server aside from their own personal shared website hosting account. The web site hosting resources that each account may resort to are fixed by the web hosting provider that owns the web hosting server and by the respective website hosting package. That brings on the second important question:
How are the shared hosting web servers split among the customers?
Web hosting companies that distribute shared web site hosting services normally have diverse web hosting packages. Those plans offer diverse quotas of site hosting resources and specifications, which in fact define the restrictions that a web site hosting package will have. The user may select between the different web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he deems will suit him best. The web space hosting plan will then define what limits the customer's account will have, once set up. The prices and the specs of the site hosting packages are determined by the particular hosting supplier. Depending on the policy of the firm, the shared web site hosting service falls into two groups - the free hosting solution and the classic shared solution, currently very famous among "cPanel hosting" sellers as a cloud web hosting one. It's impossible to assert, which one is more preferable, since they are quite different from each other and they indeed depend on the marketing tactics of the particular vendor and, of course, the needs of the given client.
What is the contrast between the free of charge and the standard shared website hosting solution?
Of course, the chief difference between the free of charge and the paid service is in the quantity of features that they contain. Free website hosting corporations are not able to keep a big amount of hosting servers, therefore, they plainly host more clients on a single server by lowering the quantity of resources provided by the accounts. This will be effective only in case the web hosting servers are kept under surveillance and administered properly, because the great amount of accounts may cause the web hosting server to crash again and again. The majority of the free hosting vendors, though, overlook the quality of the service and as a result, it's very tough to find a free of cost web hosting service that's actually worth the effort. The top free hosting corporations normally provide free client support even to the free website hosting clients, because they want their sites to grow so that they eventually migrate to a paid web hosting package, which offers more web site hosting resources. One such corporation, for instance, is FreeHostia.com, which is among the biggest and oldest free website hosting companies in the world.
On the other hand, traditional shared web hosting vendors such as Hosting Advocate, for example, may afford to keep multiple hosting servers and therefore, they may afford to provide much more feature-rich hosting packages. Of course, that influences the pricing of the webspace hosting packages. Paying a higher price for a web site hosting service, though, does not automatically signify that this package has a finer quality. The most advantageous services are the balanced ones, which involve a fee that corresponds to the actual service which you're obtaining. The best site hosting vendors that have been around for quite some time are listing their prices and package configurations in an objective fashion, so that the client may be informed of what exactly he is obtaining. Additionally, some of them provide a free extra with the site hosting plan, like the 1-click applications installer, complemented with 100's of gratis web page skins that are offered by 'Hosting Advocate'. Such website hosting suppliers do care about their reputation and this is the reason why if you pick them, you can be confident that you won't get hoaxed into paying for a plan that you cannot in fact avail of.
What should I anticipate from a shared web site hosting service?
The shared web space hosting service is best for those who would like to host a basic web page, which is going to utilize a small or medium amount of bandwidth each month. You cannot anticipate, however, that a shared site hosting account will last you a lifetime, because as your business gets bigger, your website will become more and more demanding. So, you will have to ultimately upgrade to a more feature-rich web site hosting solution like a semi-dedicated server, a VPS (also known as a private virtual web hosting server, or VPS), or why not a dedicated server. So, when choosing a web space hosting provider, you should also consider how they can be of service to you, otherwise you might end up migrating your domain name manually to a separate provider, which can cause web site complications and even continued downtime for your site. Hence, picking a hosting provider such as 'Hosting Advocate', which can supply you with the required domain name and hosting services as you grow, is essential and will save you lots of predicaments in the long run.