An explanation of hosting
The most standard and popularly availed of form of web hosting is the shared web hosting solution. It represents a way to host your web portal without having to understand much about programming and handling a web hosting server. Moreover, it's also the most economical type of hosting and it's indeed affordable for everyone. Nonetheless, what is shared web space hosting?
What is shared website hosting?
As the name signifies, the shared site hosting service is a type of service where a lot of users share the system resources of one and the same web server. This means that all server ingredients like CPU, hard disk drives, RAM, network cards etc. are allotted among the users whose accounts are on that very same hosting server. This is normally made accomplishable by setting up different accounts for the separate clients and imposing certain limitations and usage quotas for each of them. Those limits are applied so as to restrain the customers from interfering with each other's accounts and, of course, to hinder the hosting server from overburdening. Usually, shared site hosting customers do not have root access to the web server's config files, which principally goes to say that they cannot access anything else on the hosting server beside their own website page hosting account. The web page hosting resources that each account may resort to are set by the hosting corporation that owns the web hosting server and by the given webspace hosting plan. That leads up to the second essential question:
How are the shared hosting servers divided among the users?
Web hosting corporations that provide shared webspace hosting solutions usually have different web space hosting plans. Those plans provide diverse quotas of web space hosting resources and specs, which in fact fix the restrictions that a web space hosting package will have. The user may select between the separate web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he thinks will fit him best. The webspace hosting package will then define what limitations the customer's account will include, once set up. The prices and the specifications of the web hosting plans are defined by the actual hosting supplier. Depending on the politics of the supplier, the shared site hosting solution falls into two groups - the free hosting service and the classic shared solution, most recently very popular among "cPanel hosting" corporations as a cloud web hosting one. It's not possible to judge, which one is more preferable, since they are very different from one another and they really are dependent on the business tactics of the given supplier and, of course, the requirements of the given customer.
What is the contrast between the free and the normal shared site hosting service?
Of course, the primary difference between the free and the paid solution is in the amount of resources that they include. Free hosting providers are not capable of maintaining a great amount of hosting servers, therefore, they plainly host more customers on a single hosting server by lowering the amount of system resources offered by the accounts. This will be efficient only if the web hosting servers are monitored and maintained properly, since the large number of accounts may make the hosting server crash repeatedly. Most of the free web space hosting providers, though, overlook the quality of the service and as a result, it's very difficult to discover a free web hosting service that's actually worth the time. The top free hosting companies typically provide free technical support even to the free hosting users, since they want their sites to enlarge so that they subsequently move to a paid webspace hosting account, which offers more website hosting features. One such vendor, for example, is FreeHostia.com, which is among the largest and oldest free site hosting suppliers worldwide.
At the same time, traditional shared web hosting distributors such as Free Hostia, for example, may afford to maintain lots of web hosting servers and therefore, they are able to provide much more feature-rich web space hosting packages. Of course, that influences the pricing of the webspace hosting plans. Paying a higher price for a website hosting solution, though, does not automatically signify that this package has a better quality. The best solutions are the balanced ones, which offer a fee that matches the real service which you're receiving. The top web space hosting vendors that have been around for quite some time are presenting their prices and package specifications in a realistic way, so that the client may be aware of what indeed he is getting. Also, some of them give a free bonus with the site hosting package, such as the 1-click applications installer, complemented with 100's of complimentary design templates that are offered by 'Free Hostia'. Such web site hosting vendors do look after their reputation and this is the reason why if you go with them, you can be calm that you won't get deluded into paying for an account that you cannot actually make use of.
What should I expect from a shared web site hosting solution?
The shared web space hosting service is best for individuals who wish to host an average site, which is going to consume a small or medium amount of web traffic every month. You cannot expect, though, that a shared webspace hosting account will last you a lifetime, because as your business expands, your web portal will become more and more demanding. So, you will have to eventually migrate to a more powerful site hosting service like a semi-dedicated server, a VPS (a.k.a. a virtual server, or VPS), or why not a dedicated server. Therefore, when selecting a web site hosting provider, you should also think about how they can be of service to you, otherwise you might end up migrating your domain name manually to a separate provider, which can cause website problems and even extended downtime for your web portal. So, going with a web space hosting provider like 'Free Hostia', which can present you with the required domain name and hosting services as you grow bigger, is crucial and will spare you a lot of troubles in the future.