An explanation of hosting

The most basic and frequently availed of form of web hosting is the shared web hosting solution. It represents a means to host your web portal without having to understand much about programming and running a server. In addition to that, it's also the most economical type of website hosting and it's very affordable for everyone. However, what is shared hosting?

What is shared website hosting?

As the name indicates, the shared web hosting service is a form of service where a lot of clients share the reserves of one and the same server. This denotes that all web hosting server components like CPU, hard drives, RAM, network interface cards etc. are allotted among the customers whose accounts are on that very same server. This is mostly made achievable by opening separate accounts for the different users and setting given restrictions and quotas for each of them. Those restrictions are applied in order to hinder the clients from intervening with each other's accounts and, of course, to prevent the hosting server from overloading. Usually, shared webspace hosting users do not have root-level access to the web hosting server's configuration files, which primarily signifies that they do not have access to anything else on the web hosting server apart from their very own shared hosting account. The site hosting features that each account may avail of are determined by the web hosting provider that owns the web hosting server and by the respective website hosting package. That brings on the second essential question:

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

Web hosting suppliers that distribute shared webspace hosting solutions typically have diverse hosting packages. Those packages offer different amounts of web space hosting resources and specs, which actually fix the restrictions that a hosting plan will have. The customer may select between the individual web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he thinks will suit him best. The site hosting package will then define what limits the customer's account will include, once opened. The prices and the specs of the web hosting packages are chosen by the given hosting provider. Based on the policy of the company, the shared web site hosting service can be divided into 2 categories - the free hosting solution and the standard shared solution, currently very popular among "cPanel hosting" providers as a cloud web hosting one. It's not possible to state, which one is more preferable, since they are quite different from each other and they actually are determined by the marketing strategy of the given corporation and, of course, the needs of the particular client.

What is the contrast between the free of cost and the standard shared web space hosting solution?

Of course, the primary difference between the free of charge and the paid service is in the quantity of features that they contain. Free web site hosting providers are not capable of maintaining a large amount of web hosting servers, hence, they merely accommodate more clients on a single server by decreasing the quantity of resources offered by the accounts. This will be efficient only if the web hosting servers are kept under surveillance and administered appropriately, because the immense amount of accounts may make the hosting server crash time and time again. The majority of the free hosting corporations, however, ignore the quality of the service and therefore, it's very tough to come across a free web hosting service that's in fact worth the time. The top free hosting firms usually offer free customer support even to the free site hosting users, since they want their websites to enlarge so that they subsequently migrate to a paid web hosting plan, which offers more site hosting resources. Such supplier, for instance, is FreeHostia.com, which is among the biggest and oldest free web hosting suppliers worldwide.

On the other hand, traditional shared web hosting firms like lumenhost, for instance, may afford to keep plenty of hosting servers and as a result, they may afford to offer much more feature-rich web site hosting plans. Of course, that reflects on the pricing of the web hosting packages. Paying a higher fee for a web site hosting account, though, does not necessarily mean that this package has a better quality. The most advantageous solutions are the balanced ones, which involve a fee that corresponds to the concrete service which you're obtaining. The top webspace hosting providers that have been around for a long time are listing their prices and plan specifications in an objective fashion, so that the customer may know what in fact he is getting. In addition, some of these provide a free bonus with the web space hosting package, such as the 1-click applications installer, accompanied by hundreds of fee-free web site skins that are supplied by 'lumenhost'. Such web site hosting distributors do look after their reputation and that's why if you go with them, you can be certain that you won't get hoaxed into purchasing a solution that you cannot in fact utilize.

What should I expect from a shared web hosting service?

The shared webspace hosting solution is best for those who want to host an average website, which is going to use a small or medium amount of traffic every month. You cannot anticipate, however, that a shared web page hosting account will last you a lifetime, since as your business grows bigger, your web portal will become more and more demanding. Hence, you will have to ultimately migrate to a more powerful hosting service like a semi-dedicated server, a VPS (a.k.a. a virtual private web hosting server, or VPS), or why not a dedicated server. So, when picking a hosting company, you should also reflect about how they can be of service to you, otherwise you might end up moving your domain name manually to a different company, which can bring about web site complications and even continued downtime for your web site. So, picking a web site hosting distributor like 'lumenhost', which can supply you with the needed domain name and hosting services as you grow, is vital and will save you a lot of complications in the future.