A description of hosting
The most basic and popularly availed of kind of web hosting is the shared web hosting solution. It constitutes a means to host your web page without having to understand much about programming and managing a web hosting server. Besides, it's also the cheapest form of hosting and it's indeed affordable for everybody. Nonetheless, what is shared web space hosting?
What is shared hosting?
As the name implies, the shared web space hosting service is a form of service where lots of users share the reserves of the same server. This means that all server constituents like CPU, hard disks, RAM, NICs and so on, are allocated among the clients whose accounts are on that very same server. This is typically made accomplishable by setting up separate accounts for the different customers and fixing some limits and quotas for each of them. Those limitations are applied so as to restrain the users from meddling with each other's accounts and, of course, to prevent the hosting server from overburdening. Normally, shared web page hosting customers do not have complete root access to the web server's config files, which basically signifies that they cannot access anything else on the web server but their own personal website page hosting account. The web page hosting features that each account may avail of are determined by the web hosting corporation that possesses the web hosting server and by the given website hosting plan. That causes the second vital question:
How are the shared hosting web servers split among the customers?
Web hosting corporations that furnish shared web site hosting services usually have various hosting packages. Those plans involve different quotas of webspace hosting features and specifications, which actually determine the restrictions that a web hosting package will include. The user may select between the individual web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he believes will befit him best. The webspace hosting plan will then determine what restrictions the user's account will include, once opened. The prices and the specifications of the website hosting plans are determined by the very hosting supplier. Based on the policy of the corporation, the shared web hosting solution can be divided into two types - the free hosting service and the popular shared solution, most recently very popular among "cPanel hosting" vendors as a cloud web hosting one. It's not possible to state, which one is better, since they are very different from one another and they really are subject to the marketing tactics of the particular supplier and, of course, the requirements of the particular client.
What is the difference between the free and the regular shared web space hosting service?
Of course, the chief difference between the free of charge and the paid service is in the quantity of features that they offer. Free webspace hosting distributors are not able to keep an enormous number of hosting servers, hence, they just host more clients on a single hosting server by decreasing the amount of system resources provided by the accounts. This will be effective only if the web hosting servers are supervised and handled appropriately, because the big number of accounts may make the hosting server crash regularly. Most of the free web hosting distributors, however, ignore the quality of the service and as a result, it's very difficult to discover a free of cost webspace hosting solution that's in fact worth the time. The top free hosting companies commonly offer free customer support even to the free hosting users, because they want their websites to grow so that they eventually migrate to a paid web space hosting plan, which offers more hosting features. One such firm, for instance, is FreeHostia.com, which is one of the largest and eldest free site hosting vendors worldwide.
At the same time, established shared web hosting vendors such as HD Web Hosting, for example, are able to maintain a lot of hosting servers and so, they may afford to offer much more powerful web hosting packages. Of course, that reflects on the cost of the web site hosting packages. Paying a higher price for a site hosting service, however, does not automatically signify that this service has a better quality. The best services are the balanced ones, which involve a fee that corresponds to the real service which you're receiving. The first-rate webspace hosting corporations that have been around for quite a while are displaying their prices and package features in an objective manner, so that the customer may know what indeed he is getting. Moreover, some of them give a free bonus with the site hosting plan, like the 1-click applications installer, accompanied by 100's of free web layouts that are furnished by 'HD Web Hosting'. Such website hosting suppliers do care about their good name and that is the reason why if you pick them, you can rest assured that you won't get duped into buying a plan that you cannot in fact make use of.
What should I expect from a shared site hosting solution?
The shared site hosting solution is best for persons who would like to host a normal web page, which is going to swallow a small or medium amount of web traffic each month. You cannot expect, though, that a shared webspace hosting account will last you a lifetime, since as your business expands, your web page will become more and more resource consuming. Therefore, you will have to eventually upgrade to a more feature-rich hosting service 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 selecting a web hosting company, you should also consider how they can be of service to you, or else you might end up moving your domain name manually to a separate provider, which can create site troubles and even extended downtime for your web site. Therefore, selecting a web hosting distributor such as 'HD Web Hosting', which can provide you with the required domain name and hosting services as you grow, is crucial and will spare you a lot of frustrations in the future.