An explanation of hosting
The most elemental and regularly used sort of web hosting is the shared web hosting service. It represents a means to host your web site without having to understand much about programming and handling a web server. Moreover, it's also the most economical form of web site hosting and it's very affordable for everyone. Still, what is shared web hosting?
What is shared web space hosting?
As the name designates, the shared web space hosting service is a sort of service where lots of users share the system resources of one and the same web hosting server. This implies that all web hosting server elements like CPU, hard disks, RAM, network cards and so on, are distributed among the customers whose accounts are on that very same web server. This is mainly made achievable by setting up separate accounts for the different clients and fixing specific restrictions and resource usage quotas for each of them. Those restrictions are allocated in order to restrain the users from intervening with each other's accounts and, of course, to prevent the hosting server from overloading. Typically, shared hosting clients do not have complete root access to the web server's config files, which basically goes to say that they cannot access anything else on the web hosting server but their own website page hosting account. The web site hosting resources that each account may resort to are fixed by the hosting company that possesses the server and by the particular webspace hosting package. That results in the second important question:
How are the shared web hosting servers divided among the customers?
Hosting vendors that offer shared website hosting accounts typically have various site hosting plans. Those packages involve different quotas of web hosting features and specifications, which in fact fix the limits that a hosting plan will include. The client may pick between the individual web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he thinks will fit him best. The web hosting plan will then determine what limitations the client's account will include, once set up. The costs and the features of the web space hosting packages are specified by the particular hosting corporation. Depending on the policy of the company, the shared web page hosting service falls into 2 types - the free hosting service and the standard shared solution, currently very popular among "cPanel hosting" merchants as a cloud web hosting one. It's not possible to state, which one is more preferable, since they are quite different from each other and they indeed depend on the marketing strategy of the specific provider and, of course, the demands of the particular customer.
What is the contrast between the free of cost and the classic shared web site hosting service?
Of course, the principal difference between the free of charge and the paid solution is in the amount of resources that they include. Free site hosting firms are not capable of maintaining an enormous amount of web hosting servers, hence, they simply accommodate more customers on one single hosting server by decreasing the quantity of resources offered by the accounts. This will be effective only if the web hosting servers are monitored and handled properly, because the enormous amount of accounts may make the web server crash on a regular basis. The majority of the free webspace hosting corporations, however, overlook the quality of the service and as a result, it's very difficult to come across a free of charge website hosting solution that's in fact worth the time. The top free hosting distributors usually offer free client support even to the free website hosting users, since they want their web pages to grow bigger so that they eventually migrate to a paid hosting package, which offers more site hosting features. Such corporation, for instance, is FreeHostia.com, which is one of the biggest and eldest free web hosting providers worldwide.
On the other hand, established shared web hosting companies such as Free Hostia, for instance, may afford to maintain plenty of hosting servers and therefore, they may afford to provide much more powerful web site hosting plans. Of course, that influences the cost of the site hosting packages. Paying a higher fee for a web space hosting account, however, does not automatically imply 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 getting. The top-notch hosting corporations that have been around for quite a while are exhibiting their price tags and package specs in a realistic manner, so that the customer may be informed of what indeed he is receiving. Furthermore, some of these give a free extra with the web space hosting plan, like the 1-click applications installer, accompanied by hundreds of complimentary website templates that are supplied by 'Free Hostia'. Such site hosting firms do worry about their reputation and this is the reason why if you choose them, you can be calm that you won't get beguiled into buying a service that you cannot in fact use.
What should I anticipate from a shared web page hosting solution?
The shared web site hosting solution is best for individuals who wish to host an average website, which is going to generate a small or medium amount of traffic every month. You cannot expect, however, that a shared web site hosting account will be sufficient for your needs, because as your business grows bigger, your web page will become more and more resource consuming. Therefore, you will have to eventually migrate to a more feature-rich web space hosting solution like a semi-dedicated server, a VPS (aka a virtual web server, or VPS), or why not a dedicated server. Therefore, when picking a webspace hosting company, you should also think about how they can be of service to you, or else you might end up relocating your domain name manually to a different provider, which can bring about site complications and even continued downtime for your website. So, selecting a hosting distributor such as 'Free Hostia', which can provide you with the required domain name and hosting services as you grow, is essential and will save you lots of nuisances in the future.