A description of web hosting
The most basic and universally utilized kind of web hosting is the shared web hosting service. It constitutes a means to host your site without having to know much about programming and running a server. Additionally, it's also the most inexpensive type of web page hosting and it's indeed affordable for anybody. Nevertheless, what is shared hosting?
What is shared website hosting?
As the name indicates, the shared hosting service is a type of service where plenty of customers share the system resources of one and the same web server. This denotes that all web hosting server ingredients like CPU, hard disk drives, RAM, network interface cards etc. are divided among the users whose accounts are on that same web hosting server. This is usually rendered feasible by creating different accounts for the different clients and allocating specific restrictions and usage quotas for each of them. Those limitations are fixed in order to hinder the clients from interfering with each other's accounts and, of course, to prevent the web server from overloading. Typically, shared web hosting clients do not have root-level access to the hosting server's config files, which essentially signifies that they do not have access to anything else on the web hosting server apart from their very own web hosting account. The webspace hosting resources that each account may avail of are fixed by the web hosting corporation that owns the web server and by the particular website hosting plan. That predetermines the second essential question:
How are the shared web hosting servers shared among the users?
Web hosting vendors that supply shared site hosting solutions typically have different web site hosting plans. Those plans involve different amounts of web site hosting features and specifications, which in fact set the limitations that a web hosting plan will include. The user may select between the individual web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he thinks will fit him best. The webspace hosting package will then determine what limits the customer's account will involve, once set up. The prices and the specs of the webspace hosting packages are determined by the given web hosting firm. Based on the policy of the company, the shared web space hosting service can be divided into two groups - the free hosting service and the classic shared service, currently very famous among "cPanel hosting" vendors as a cloud web hosting one. It's not possible to state, which one is better, since they are very different from each other and they indeed depend on the business tactics of the specific distributor and, of course, the needs of the given customer.
What is the distinction between the free of charge and the classic shared web hosting service?
Of course, the main difference between the free and the paid solution is in the amount of resources that they involve. Free web hosting corporations are not able to maintain an enormous number of web hosting servers, hence, they plainly accommodate more customers on one single web server by reducing the amount of resources offered by the accounts. This will be effective only in case the web servers are supervised and tackled properly, because the big number of accounts may make the hosting server crash repeatedly. The majority of the free hosting corporations, though, overlook the quality of the service and hence, it's very hard to come across a free of cost website hosting service that's in fact worth the time. The top free hosting vendors commonly provide free technical support even to the free site hosting users, because they want their sites to grow bigger so that they eventually move to a paid webspace hosting plan, which includes more hosting features. Such supplier, for example, is FreeHostia.com, which is one of the biggest and eldest free hosting firms worldwide.
At the same time, traditional shared web hosting firms such as Voila, for instance, are able to maintain multiple hosting servers and so, they may afford to offer much more powerful web site hosting packages. Of course, that influences the pricing of the website hosting plans. Paying a higher price for a web space hosting solution, however, does not automatically denote that this package has a finer quality. The most advantageous services are the balanced ones, which involve a price that corresponds to the concrete service which you're getting. The first-rate hosting suppliers that have been around for a long time are presenting their prices and package configurations in an objective way, so that the client may acquainted with what indeed he is receiving. In addition, some of these give a free extra with the website hosting package, like the 1-click applications installer, accompanied by 100's of cost-free site layouts that are furnished by 'Voila'. Such web space hosting providers do worry about their reputation and this is the reason why if you select them, you can rest certain that you won't get deluded into buying an account that you cannot in fact use.
What should I expect from a shared website hosting service?
The shared webspace hosting solution is best for persons who want to host an average web page, which is going to swallow a small or medium amount of bandwidth each month. You cannot anticipate, however, that a shared web hosting account will be sufficient for your needs, since as your business enlarges, your website will become more and more demanding. Therefore, you will have to ultimately move to a more feature-rich web hosting solution such as a semi-dedicated server, a VPS (also known as a virtual private hosting server, or VPS), or why not a dedicated server. So, when picking a web site hosting distributor, you should also consider how they can be of service to you, or else you might end up transferring your domain name manually to a different supplier, which can bring about web site problems and even continued downtime for your web page. Therefore, selecting a webspace hosting provider like 'Voila', which can present you with the required domain name and hosting services as you grow bigger, is vital and will save you a lot of complications in the long run.