A definition of website hosting

The most principal and regularly used type of web hosting is the shared web hosting solution. It constitutes a way to host your web site without having to be much informed about programming and administering a server. In addition, it's also the most inexpensive form of web space hosting and it's quite affordable for everyone. Nonetheless, what is shared web site hosting?

What is shared hosting?

As the name hints, the shared web hosting solution is a sort of service where lots of customers share the system resources of one and the same web hosting server. This denotes that all hosting server ingredients such as CPU, hard disk drives, RAM, NICs and so on, are divided among the clients whose accounts are on that same hosting server. This is mostly made accomplishable by opening different accounts for the different clients and setting certain restrictions and quotas for each of them. Those limitations are set so as to restrain the customers from meddling with each other's accounts and, of course, to prevent the hosting server from overburdening. Usually, shared webspace hosting clients do not have root-level access to the web hosting server's config files, which principally indicates that they do not have access to anything else on the web hosting server beside their very own shared hosting account. The site hosting resources that each account may utilize are set by the hosting supplier that possesses the hosting server and by the respective web space hosting plan. That leads up to the second essential question:

How are the shared web hosting servers divided among the customers?

Hosting corporations that furnish shared web hosting accounts usually have diverse webspace hosting plans. Those packages offer different amounts of webspace hosting resources and specs, which actually fix the limits that a hosting package will include. The client may select between the separate web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he believes will fit him best. The web site hosting package will then define what restrictions the client's account will have, once set up. The costs and the features of the site hosting plans are defined by the specific web hosting firm. Based on the policy of the provider, the shared hosting solution can be divided into 2 categories - the free hosting solution and the standard shared solution, currently very famous among "cPanel hosting" distributors as a cloud web hosting one. It's not possible to judge, which one is more preferable, since they are very different from one another and they indeed are dependent on the marketing policy of the specific company and, of course, the needs of the given client.

What is the distinction between the free and the typical shared web space hosting service?

Of course, the main difference between the free of charge and the paid solution is in the quantity of resources that they involve. Free site hosting firms are not able to keep a great amount of web servers, therefore, they just accommodate more clients on a single web server by decreasing the quantity of system resources provided by the accounts. This will be effective only on condition that the hosting servers are kept under surveillance and tackled appropriately, since the enormous amount of accounts may make the hosting server crash time and time again. The majority of the free web site hosting providers, however, ignore the quality of the service and therefore, it's very difficult to stumble upon a free website hosting solution that's actually worth the time. The top free hosting distributors typically provide free customer support even to the free web space hosting clients, since they want their web pages to grow so that they subsequently move to a paid web hosting account, which includes more web site hosting features. Such provider, for instance, is FreeHostia.com, which is one of the biggest and eldest free web hosting corporations worldwide.

At the same time, traditional shared web hosting vendors such as Free Hostia, for instance, are able to keep a lot of web hosting servers and therefore, they may afford to provide much more powerful site hosting plans. Of course, that reflects on the pricing of the web site hosting plans. Paying a higher price for a web space hosting plan, however, does not automatically denote that this package has a better quality. The best solutions are the balanced ones, which offer a price that matches the concrete service which you're getting. The best web hosting providers that have been around for quite a while are showing their prices and package specifications in an objective way, so that the client may know what in fact he is obtaining. Also, some of them provide a free extra with the site hosting plan, such as the 1-click applications installer, accompanied by 100's of free-of-charge web page themes that are provided by 'Free Hostia'. Such webspace hosting distributors do look after their reputation and that is the reason why if you choose them, you can be calm that you won't get beguiled into buying a plan that you cannot actually use.

What should I expect from a shared web space hosting service?

The shared webspace hosting service is best for persons who would like to host a standard web portal, which is going to utilize a small or medium amount of web traffic every month. You cannot anticipate, however, that a shared web hosting account will be sufficient for your needs, because as your business gets bigger, your web site will become more and more resource consuming. So, you will have to eventually move to a more feature-rich website hosting solution like a semi-dedicated server, a VPS (also known as a virtual web server, or VPS), or why not a dedicated server. Therefore, when choosing a hosting vendor, you should also ponder about how they can be of service to you, or else you might end up moving your domain name manually to a separate vendor, which can cause web site complications and even continuous downtime for your web site. So, going with a web space hosting company like 'Free Hostia', which can supply you with the required domain name and hosting services as you grow, is vital and will save you a lot of difficulties in the future.