A definition of web site hosting

The most fundamental and frequently availed of kind of web hosting is the shared web hosting service. It constitutes a means to host your web site without having to understand much about programming and managing a web hosting server. Furthermore, it's also the most inexpensive type of web site hosting and it's in fact affordable for everyone. Nevertheless, what is shared hosting?

What is shared web hosting?

As the name implies, the shared webspace hosting service is a sort of service where many clients share the system resources of the same web server. This means that all web server elements such as CPU, hard disk drives, RAM, network cards and so on, are shared among the users whose accounts are on that same web hosting server. This is typically made possible by creating different accounts for the separate customers and appointing some restrictions and usage quotas for each of them. Those limitations are assigned so as to prevent the clients from interfering with each other's accounts and, of course, to hinder the server from overburdening. Normally, shared web hosting users do not have complete root access to the hosting server's config files, which essentially denotes that they do not have access to anything else on the hosting server aside from their own shared web hosting account. The web page hosting resources that each account may resort to are fixed by the hosting supplier that possesses the web hosting server and by the given web hosting package. That paves the way for the second vital question:

How are the shared hosting servers divided among the customers?

Web hosting distributors that offer shared site hosting plans commonly have different web hosting packages. Those packages offer different quotas of web site hosting features and specifications, which in fact fix the limitations that a website hosting account will include. The user may choose between the separate web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he believes will suit him best. The web site hosting plan will then determine what restrictions the user's account will have, once created. The prices and the specs of the webspace hosting packages are defined by the actual hosting firm. Depending on the politics of the provider, the shared web page hosting solution can be divided into two groups - the free hosting solution and the standard shared service, currently very famous among "cPanel hosting" traders as a cloud web hosting one. It's impossible to affirm, which one is better, since they are very different from one another and they really are dependent on the business policy of the given distributor and, of course, the requirements of the specific client.

What is the difference between the free of charge and the popular shared hosting service?

Of course, the main difference between the free and the paid service is in the amount of features that they contain. Free site hosting corporations are not able to maintain an immense amount of servers, therefore, they plainly host more customers on a single hosting server by decreasing the quantity of resources offered by the accounts. This will be effective only on condition that the web servers are monitored and tackled properly, since the huge number of accounts may cause the web hosting server to crash over and over again. The majority of the free website hosting corporations, though, neglect the quality of the service and hence, it's very tough to discover a free web site hosting solution that's in fact worth the time. The top free hosting suppliers typically offer free customer support even to the free site hosting clients, since they want their web pages to enlarge so that they eventually migrate to a paid webspace hosting package, which offers more site hosting features. Such distributor, for example, is FreeHostia.com, which is among the biggest and eldest free webspace hosting firms in the world.

At the same time, traditional shared web hosting distributors such as Quite Great Hosting, for instance, may afford to keep lots of servers and so, they may afford to offer much more feature-rich site hosting plans. Of course, that reflects on the cost of the site hosting packages. Paying a higher fee for a web site hosting package, though, does not necessarily signify that this service has a finer quality. The most optimal solutions are the balanced ones, which offer a fee that corresponds to the real service which you're obtaining. The top hosting providers that have been around for quite a while are displaying their prices and package specifications in a realistic fashion, so that the client may be aware of what in fact he is receiving. Furthermore, some of these give a free extra with the web hosting plan, like the 1-click applications installer, accompanied by 100's of fee-free web site layouts that are provided by 'Quite Great Hosting'. Such webspace hosting suppliers do look after their good name and this is the reason why if you pick them, you can be confident that you won't get deluded into paying for an account that you cannot actually avail of.

What should I anticipate from a shared web hosting service?

The shared website hosting service is best for people who would like to host an average web portal, which is going to consume a small or medium amount of web traffic each month. You cannot anticipate, though, that a shared web site hosting account will last you a lifetime, since as your business grows, your site will become more and more resource consuming. So, you will have to ultimately migrate to a more feature-rich web site hosting solution like a semi-dedicated server, a VPS (also known as a virtual web hosting server, or VPS), or why not a dedicated server. So, when selecting a web hosting vendor, you should also ponder about how they can be of service to you, otherwise you might end up moving your domain name manually to a different supplier, which can create web site troubles and even prolonged downtime for your website. Therefore, going with a webspace hosting distributor such as 'Quite Great Hosting', which can provide you with the required domain name and hosting services as you grow bigger, is crucial and will spare you a lot of headaches in the long run.