A description of hosting
The most basic and widely availed of sort of web hosting is the shared web hosting service. It constitutes a means to host your web site without having to know much about programming and managing a web server. Additionally, it's also the most economical form of web hosting and it's indeed affordable for anybody. Still, what is shared web hosting?
What is shared site hosting?
As the name signifies, the shared web page hosting service is a type of service where a lot of users share the resources of one and the same server. This goes to say that all hosting server constituents such as CPU, hard disks, RAM, network interface cards etc. are apportioned among the clients whose accounts are on that very same web server. This is mostly rendered accomplishable by opening separate accounts for the separate clients and assigning certain limitations and resource usage quotas for each of them. Those limitations are imposed in order to prevent the clients from intervening with each other's accounts and, of course, to hinder the hosting server from overburdening. Typically, shared web page hosting clients do not have root access to the web hosting server's configuration files, which primarily implies that they do not have access to anything else on the web server but their own personal web hosting account. The web page hosting resources that each account may resort to are fixed by the hosting firm that owns the server and by the respective web space hosting package. That predetermines the second important question:
How are the shared hosting servers split among the clients?
Hosting corporations that offer shared hosting services typically have various site hosting packages. Those plans involve diverse quotas of web hosting features and specs, which actually set the limits that a webspace hosting account will include. The user may select between the separate web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he believes will befit him best. The hosting plan will then define what limits the user's account will involve, once set up. The costs and the specifications of the web space hosting packages are defined by the specific web hosting company. Depending on the policy of the corporation, the shared website hosting solution falls into two categories - the free hosting service and the typical shared solution, most recently very popular among "cPanel hosting" providers as a cloud web hosting one. It's impossible to say, which one is better, since they are very different from each other and they indeed are subject to the marketing policy of the particular corporation and, of course, the demands of the particular user.
What is the difference between the free of cost and the typical shared web page hosting solution?
Of course, the major difference between the free and the paid service is in the amount of resources that they involve. Free website hosting suppliers are not capable of maintaining an enormous amount of web hosting servers, hence, they simply host more customers on one web hosting server by reducing the amount of resources provided by the accounts. This will be efficient only on condition that the servers are monitored and administered properly, because the enormous number of accounts may make the web server crash again and again. The majority of the free web hosting vendors, however, neglect the quality of the service and therefore, it's very difficult to come across a free of charge site hosting solution that's in fact worth the effort. The top free hosting firms usually offer free client support even to the free web site hosting customers, since they want their sites to enlarge so that they eventually move to a paid site hosting account, which includes more web space hosting features. One such supplier, for example, is FreeHostia.com, which is one of the biggest and eldest free web space hosting firms worldwide.
At the same time, established shared web hosting firms like Genius Monster Network, for example, may afford to maintain a lot of servers and hence, they may afford to offer much more feature-rich hosting plans. Of course, that influences the pricing of the web hosting plans. Paying a higher fee for a website hosting account, however, does not automatically signify that this package has a better quality. The most advantageous solutions are the balanced ones, which offer a fee that matches the actual service which you're obtaining. The top web hosting distributors that have been around for quite some time are listing their prices and plan specifications in an objective fashion, so that the customer may know what in fact he is receiving. What's more, some of them give a free bonus with the site hosting plan, such as the 1-click applications installer, complemented with 100's of free-of-charge templates that are supplied by 'Genius Monster Network'. Such hosting providers do look after their reputation and that's why if you go with them, you can rest confident that you won't get beguiled into paying for a plan that you cannot actually utilize.
What should I anticipate from a shared hosting service?
The shared hosting service is best for those who wish to host a normal web portal, which is going to use a small or medium amount of bandwidth each month. You cannot expect, though, that a shared hosting account will last you a lifetime, because as your business develops, your web portal will become more and more resource consuming. Therefore, you will have to eventually upgrade to a more feature-rich web site hosting solution like a semi-dedicated server, a VPS (aka a private virtual hosting server, or VPS), or why not a dedicated server. Therefore, when choosing a web site hosting provider, you should also consider how they can be of service to you, otherwise you might end up transferring your domain name manually to a separate company, which can bring about website troubles and even prolonged downtime for your web site. So, choosing a web space hosting provider such as 'Genius Monster Network', which can provide you with the required domain name and hosting services as you grow, is crucial and will save you a lot of headaches in the future.