An explanation of web site hosting

The most fundamental and regularly used variety of web hosting is the shared web hosting service. It's a means to host your web site without having to understand much about programming and running a hosting server. In addition to this, it's also the most economical form of site hosting and it's very affordable for everyone. Still, what is shared web site hosting?

What is shared web site hosting?

As the name signifies, the shared hosting solution is a kind of service where a lot of customers share the resources of the same web hosting server. This signifies that all web hosting server components such as CPU, hard drives, RAM, NICs etc. are distributed among the users whose accounts are on that very same web hosting server. This is mostly rendered tenable by opening separate accounts for the separate clients and imposing certain limitations and usage quotas for each of them. Those limitations are applied so as to restrain the users from interfering with each other's accounts and, of course, to hinder the server from overburdening. Usually, shared hosting users do not have complete root-level access to the hosting server's config files, which essentially denotes that they cannot access anything else on the web server beside their own personal hosting account. The site hosting resources that each account may resort to are fixed by the web hosting vendor that possesses the web server and by the respective site hosting package. That results in the second vital question:

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

Hosting providers that provide shared web page hosting services usually have different webspace hosting plans. Those packages include different amounts of web site hosting resources and specs, which in fact fix the limits that a webspace hosting plan will have. The customer may choose between the individual web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he thinks will suit him best. The webspace hosting package will then define what restrictions the customer's account will include, once created. The prices and the features of the web site hosting plans are chosen by the specific hosting supplier. Depending on the politics of the corporation, the shared website hosting solution can be divided into 2 categories - the free hosting service and the standard shared solution, currently very popular among "cPanel hosting" providers as a cloud web hosting one. It's not possible to tell, which one is more preferable, since they are very different from each other and they indeed are dependent on the marketing tactics of the specific provider and, of course, the demands of the specific customer.

What is the contrast between the free and the standard shared web site hosting solution?

Of course, the essential difference between the free and the paid service is in the quantity of features that they contain. Free hosting providers are not capable of keeping an enormous amount of servers, hence, they just host more users on one single web server by lowering the amount of resources provided by the accounts. This will be efficient only in case the hosting servers are monitored and maintained properly, because the enormous amount of accounts may make the web server crash frequently. Most of the free web space hosting vendors, however, overlook the quality of the service and hence, it's very tough to come across a free of charge web space hosting service that's in fact worth the effort. The top free hosting firms usually provide free client support even to the free website hosting users, because they want their sites to enlarge so that they subsequently move to a paid webspace hosting plan, which offers more web hosting resources. Such supplier, for example, is FreeHostia.com, which is among the largest and eldest free web space hosting providers in the world.

At the same time, traditional shared web hosting providers such as Exclusive Hosting, for example, are able to keep many web hosting servers and therefore, they may afford to provide much more feature-rich site hosting packages. Of course, that influences the pricing of the web space hosting packages. Paying a higher fee for a website hosting plan, however, does not automatically mean that this package has a better quality. The most advantageous solutions are the balanced ones, which involve a fee that matches the actual service which you're getting. The first-class web site hosting firms that have been around for a long time are exhibiting their price tags and plan specs in a realistic fashion, so that the client may be aware of what in fact he is receiving. What's more, some of them provide a free extra with the hosting package, like the 1-click applications installer, accompanied by hundreds of free-of-charge themes that are provided by 'Exclusive Hosting'. Such webspace hosting providers do look after their reputation and that's why if you go with them, you can be calm that you won't get hoaxed into purchasing a solution that you cannot actually utilize.

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

The shared web page hosting service is best for people who want to host a standard website, which is going to use a small or medium amount of traffic every month. You cannot anticipate, however, that a shared web space hosting account will last you a lifetime, since as your business grows bigger, your web page will become more and more resource consuming. So, you will have to ultimately migrate to a more feature-rich hosting service like a semi-dedicated server, a VPS (a.k.a. a private virtual web server, or VPS), or why not a dedicated server. Therefore, when selecting a website hosting provider, you should also consider how they can be of service to you, otherwise you might end up migrating your domain name manually to a different provider, which can create site complications and even continuous downtime for your web site. So, choosing a web hosting supplier like 'Exclusive Hosting', which can present you with the required domain name and hosting services as you get bigger, is essential and will save you lots of frustrations in the long run.