A description of web page hosting
The most basic and regularly used form of web hosting is the shared web hosting service. It constitutes a way to host your website without having to be much informed about programming and managing a web server. Additionally, it's also the cheapest form of web space hosting and it's in fact affordable for anybody. Still, what is shared site hosting?
What is shared web space hosting?
As the name indicates, the shared site hosting solution is a form of service where multiple clients share the system reserves of the same web server. This goes to say that all web server constituents such as CPU, hard disk drives, RAM, NICs etc. are allotted among the users whose accounts are on that very same web hosting server. This is mostly made viable by opening separate accounts for the separate clients and applying certain limitations and resource usage quotas for each of them. Those restrictions are imposed in order to restrain the customers from interfering with each other's accounts and, of course, to hinder the web hosting server from overburdening. Usually, shared hosting customers do not have full root-level access to the server's config files, which essentially suggests that they cannot access anything else on the hosting server aside from their own personal shared web hosting account. The web site hosting resources that each account may avail of are determined by the hosting company that owns the web server and by the respective web hosting package. That paves the way for the second essential question:
How are the shared hosting servers split among the clients?
Web hosting firms that deliver shared website hosting services typically have diverse web space hosting packages. Those packages contain different quotas of webspace hosting resources and specs, which actually define the limitations that a webspace hosting package will include. The user may select between the separate web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he thinks will fit him best. The site hosting package will then define what limitations the customer's account will include, once opened. The prices and the features of the web site hosting packages are fixed by the specific web hosting distributor. Based on the policy of the provider, the shared website hosting solution falls into 2 types - the free hosting service and the standard shared solution, most recently very popular among "cPanel hosting" retailers as a cloud web hosting one. It's impossible to allege, which one is better, since they are very different from one another and they actually are determined by the marketing strategy of the particular provider and, of course, the needs of the given client.
What is the distinction between the free of cost and the standard shared website hosting solution?
Of course, the main difference between the free of charge and the paid service is in the amount of resources that they involve. Free website hosting companies are not able to keep a great number of servers, hence, they plainly host more clients on one single server by reducing the quantity of system resources offered by the accounts. This will be efficient only if the hosting servers are monitored and dealt with appropriately, because the huge number of accounts may make the hosting server crash time and time again. The majority of the free website hosting distributors, though, ignore the quality of the service and hence, it's very hard to come across a free of charge web hosting solution that's actually worth the effort. The top free hosting providers commonly offer free customer support even to the free web hosting customers, since they want their websites to get bigger so that they subsequently move to a paid hosting package, which offers more webspace hosting features. Such company, for instance, is FreeHostia.com, which is one of the biggest and oldest free web site hosting corporations worldwide.
At the same time, traditional shared web hosting providers such as Exclusive Hosting, for instance, are able to keep many web servers and so, they are able to provide much more feature-rich web space hosting plans. Of course, that reflects on the cost of the site hosting plans. Paying a higher fee for a hosting account, though, does not automatically mean that this account has a better quality. The best solutions are the balanced ones, which involve a fee that corresponds to the real service which you're obtaining. The top site hosting providers that have been around for quite a while are showing their prices and plan specifications in an objective manner, so that the client may be aware of what in fact he is obtaining. Besides, some of them give a free extra with the hosting plan, like the 1-click applications installer, accompanied by 100's of fee-free web site skins that are offered by 'Exclusive Hosting'. Such webspace hosting corporations do look after their reputation and this is the reason why if you choose them, you can be assured that you won't get tricked into buying an account that you cannot actually utilize.
What should I expect from a shared website hosting solution?
The shared site hosting service is best for people who would like to host a basic web portal, which is going to devour a small or medium amount of bandwidth every month. You cannot expect, however, that a shared hosting account will be sufficient for your needs, because as your business gets bigger, your website will become more and more resource consuming. Therefore, you will have to ultimately migrate to a more feature-rich webspace hosting service like a semi-dedicated server, a VPS (aka a virtual hosting server, or VPS), or why not a dedicated server. Therefore, when selecting a website hosting distributor, you should also consider how they can be of service to you, otherwise you might end up relocating your domain name manually to a separate distributor, which can bring about site complications and even extended downtime for your site. Hence, choosing a hosting supplier like 'Exclusive Hosting', which can supply you with the needed domain name and hosting services as you get bigger, is essential and will save you a lot of troubles in the long run.