A definition of web hosting
The most primary and universally used kind 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 administering a server. In addition to this, it's also the cheapest form of web site hosting and it's indeed affordable for anybody. However, what is shared hosting?
What is shared web page hosting?
As the name hints, the shared web page hosting service is a sort of service where numerous customers share the reserves of one and the same web hosting server. This indicates that all server constituents such as CPU, hard disk drives, RAM, NICs and so on, are shared among the customers whose accounts are on that same server. This is normally made achievable by opening separate accounts for the different clients and fixing given restrictions and usage quotas for each of them. Those restrictions are allocated so as to prevent the customers from interfering with each other's accounts and, of course, to hinder the server from overloading. Usually, shared hosting clients do not have root access to the web server's configuration files, which basically goes to say that they cannot access anything else on the hosting server apart from their own personal website hosting account. The site hosting resources that each account may avail of are determined by the web hosting corporation that possesses the web hosting server and by the particular website hosting package. That necessitates the second vital question:
How are the shared hosting web servers divided among the clients?
Web hosting suppliers that provide shared web page hosting packages normally have different website hosting packages. Those plans contain different amounts of web site hosting features and specs, which actually define the restrictions that a site hosting package will have. The user may choose between the different web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he thinks will befit him best. The webspace hosting package will then define what limits the client's account will have, once set up. The prices and the features of the site hosting plans are defined by the very web hosting supplier. Depending on the politics of the provider, the shared web page hosting service falls into two categories - the free hosting solution and the common shared solution, currently very popular among "cPanel hosting" sellers as a cloud web hosting one. It's not possible to tell, which one is more preferable, since they are quite different from one another and they actually are dependent on the marketing strategy of the specific company and, of course, the needs of the particular user.
What is the distinction between the free of charge and the standard shared website hosting service?
Of course, the main difference between the free of cost and the paid service is in the quantity of features that they contain. Free web site hosting distributors are not capable of keeping an enormous number of web hosting servers, hence, they plainly accommodate more users on one single web server by reducing the amount of system resources offered by the accounts. This will be effective only in case the servers are monitored and dealt with appropriately, since the immense number of accounts may causer the web server to crash again and again. The majority of the free web hosting distributors, though, neglect the quality of the service and hence, it's quite tough to stumble upon a free of cost site hosting service that's in fact worth the effort. The top free hosting companies normally provide free technical support even to the free webspace hosting clients, since they want their web pages to enlarge so that they eventually move to a paid web site hosting package, which offers more site hosting features. One such distributor, for example, is FreeHostia.com, which is one of the largest and oldest free site hosting suppliers worldwide.
On the other hand, traditional shared web hosting companies such as Exclusive Hosting, for instance, are able to keep numerous web servers and so, they are able to offer much more feature-rich hosting plans. Of course, that affects the pricing of the web hosting plans. Paying a higher fee for a site hosting solution, though, does not automatically imply that this plan has a finer quality. The most advantageous solutions are the balanced ones, which offer a fee that corresponds to the real service which you're receiving. The best web hosting suppliers that have been around for quite a while are displaying their prices and package configurations in a realistic manner, so that the customer may know what exactly he is receiving. In addition, some of these give a free extra with the web space hosting plan, like the 1-click applications installer, complemented with hundreds of free-of-charge web design skins that are provided by 'Exclusive Hosting'. Such webspace hosting distributors do care about their good name and this is the reason why if you select them, you can rest confident that you won't get tricked into paying for a service that you cannot in fact avail of.
What should I anticipate from a shared web page hosting service?
The shared site hosting service is best for those who are looking to host a normal site, which is going to devour a small or medium amount of traffic every month. You cannot anticipate, however, that a shared webspace hosting account will last you a lifetime, because as your business gets bigger, your website will become more and more demanding. Hence, you will have to eventually migrate to a more feature-rich web space hosting solution like a semi-dedicated server, a VPS (a.k.a. a private virtual server, or VPS), or why not a dedicated server. Therefore, when selecting a website hosting company, you should also reflect about how they can be of service to you, or else you might end up moving your domain name manually to a separate distributor, which can create site predicaments and even continuous downtime for your web site. Hence, selecting a webspace hosting vendor such as 'Exclusive Hosting', which can provide you with the required domain name and hosting services as you grow, is essential and will save you a lot of predicaments in the long run.