A definition of web hosting
The most fundamental and widely utilized type of web hosting is the shared web hosting solution. It represents a way to host your site without having to be much informed about programming and operating a hosting server. In addition to that, it's also the most inexpensive form of web hosting and it's in fact affordable for everybody. However, what is shared web space hosting?
What is shared hosting?
As the name implies, the shared site hosting service is a sort of service where numerous users share the system resources of the same server. This indicates that all server elements such as CPU, hard disk drives, RAM, network interface cards and so on, are divided among the customers whose accounts are on that very same server. This is mostly rendered accomplishable by creating different accounts for the separate clients and imposing specific limitations and quotas for each of them. Those restrictions are appointed so as to prevent the users from intervening with each other's accounts and, of course, to prevent the web server from overburdening. Typically, shared website hosting users do not have root access to the web hosting server's config files, which principally implies that they cannot access anything else on the web server apart from their own website page hosting account. The site hosting features that each account may avail of are fixed by the hosting vendor that possesses the web hosting server and by the particular web space hosting package. That necessitates the second important question:
How are the shared hosting servers split among the clients?
Web hosting providers that provide shared site hosting plans commonly have various web site hosting plans. Those plans offer different amounts of hosting resources and specifications, which actually determine the limitations that a site hosting account will have. The customer may choose between the individual web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he believes will suit him best. The hosting package will then determine what restrictions the customer's account will involve, once created. The prices and the features of the web hosting plans are fixed by the given hosting corporation. Depending on the policy of the supplier, the shared site hosting solution can be divided into two categories - the free hosting solution and the common shared service, currently very popular among "cPanel hosting" firms as a cloud web hosting one. It's not possible to announce, which one is better, since they are quite different from each other and they actually are subject to the business policy of the particular company and, of course, the demands of the specific user.
What is the distinction between the free of cost and the normal shared site hosting service?
Of course, the essential difference between the free and the paid service is in the amount of features that they include. Free hosting corporations are not capable of maintaining a big amount of hosting servers, therefore, they simply host more customers on a single web hosting server by lowering the amount of system resources offered by the accounts. This will be effective only on condition that the servers are kept under surveillance and maintained properly, because the big amount of accounts may make the hosting server crash again and again. The majority of the free web space hosting firms, however, ignore the quality of the service and hence, it's quite hard to discover a free of cost web space hosting service that's actually worth the effort. The top free hosting firms commonly offer free client support even to the free web hosting users, since they want their web sites to grow bigger so that they eventually upgrade to a paid web hosting account, which offers more site hosting resources. Such firm, for example, is FreeHostia.com, which is one of the largest and oldest free site hosting distributors worldwide.
On the other hand, established shared web hosting distributors such as GreatHosts.biz, for example, may afford to maintain multiple servers and so, they may afford to provide much more powerful webspace hosting plans. Of course, that affects the cost of the hosting packages. Paying a higher price for a web site hosting service, though, does not necessarily signify that this package has a finer quality. The most advantageous services are the balanced ones, which offer a fee that matches the real service which you're getting. The first-class webspace hosting corporations that have been around for a long time are presenting their prices and plan features in an objective fashion, so that the customer may know what exactly he is obtaining. What's more, some of these provide a free bonus with the webspace hosting plan, such as the 1-click applications installer, complemented with 100's of fee-free site layouts that are offered by 'GreatHosts.biz'. Such website hosting distributors do look after their good name and that's why if you pick them, you can be confident that you won't get swindled into paying for a plan that you cannot actually avail of.
What should I anticipate from a shared web hosting solution?
The shared web site hosting service is best for people who would like to host a basic site, which is going to consume a small or medium amount of traffic each month. You cannot expect, however, that a shared web hosting account will last you a lifetime, because as your business grows bigger, your web page will become more and more demanding. Therefore, you will have to ultimately migrate to a more feature-rich website hosting service like a semi-dedicated server, a VPS (a.k.a. a virtual server, or VPS), or why not a dedicated server. So, when choosing a web site hosting provider, you should also reflect about how they can be of service to you, or else you might end up migrating your domain name manually to a separate supplier, which can create site troubles and even prolonged downtime for your site. So, going with a web hosting provider such as 'GreatHosts.biz', which can provide you with the required domain name and hosting services as you grow bigger, is vital and will spare you lots of nuisances in the long run.