An explanation of web hosting
The most primary and popularly availed of form of web hosting is the shared web hosting solution. It constitutes a way to host your web site without having to know much about programming and running a server. In addition to that, it's also the cheapest form of hosting and it's quite affordable for anybody. Nevertheless, what is shared website hosting?
What is shared web page hosting?
As the name indicates, the shared website hosting service is a form of service where a lot of clients share the system reserves of one and the same server. This denotes that all web server components like CPU, hard disk drives, RAM, network cards and so on, are split among the users whose accounts are on that same hosting server. This is mostly rendered feasible by creating different accounts for the different customers and imposing certain limitations and quotas for each of them. Those restrictions are imposed so as to prevent the users from intervening with each other's accounts and, of course, to hinder the web hosting server from overloading. Typically, shared hosting customers do not have complete root access to the web hosting server's config files, which principally signifies that they cannot access anything else on the web hosting server apart from their very own web hosting account. The web site hosting features that each account may avail of are set by the web hosting company that owns the server and by the respective web space hosting plan. That brings on the second essential question:
How are the shared hosting web servers divided among the customers?
Hosting companies that furnish shared website hosting accounts commonly have various web site hosting plans. Those packages involve different amounts of web hosting resources and specifications, which actually fix the limits that a web hosting account will have. The client may select between the individual web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he thinks will suit him best. The webspace hosting plan will then determine what limits the user's account will have, once set up. The prices and the features of the web hosting packages are fixed by the given web hosting vendor. Based on the policy of the vendor, the shared web site hosting solution can be divided into 2 categories - the free hosting solution and the standard shared solution, currently very famous among "cPanel hosting" providers as a cloud web hosting one. It's impossible to affirm, which one is better, since they are quite different from one another and they really are subject to the business policy of the particular provider and, of course, the needs of the given customer.
What is the difference between the free and the normal shared webspace hosting service?
Of course, the major difference between the free of charge and the paid solution is in the amount of resources that they contain. Free web hosting distributors are not capable of maintaining a big number of servers, hence, they simply host more clients 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 web servers are supervised and handled properly, since the enormous amount of accounts may make the web hosting server crash regularly. Most of the free web space hosting firms, however, neglect the quality of the service and therefore, it's quite hard to stumble upon a free of cost site hosting service that's actually worth the effort. The top free hosting distributors usually provide free technical support even to the free web space hosting customers, since they want their websites to expand so that they subsequently move to a paid site hosting plan, which includes more web site hosting resources. One such firm, for instance, is FreeHostia.com, which is one of the biggest and oldest free website hosting companies in the world.
At the same time, established shared web hosting suppliers such as Miami Hosting, for example, are able to keep many web hosting servers and so, they may afford to offer much more feature-rich hosting packages. Of course, that affects the pricing of the hosting plans. Paying a higher fee for a hosting package, however, does not necessarily imply that this package has a better quality. The most advantageous services are the balanced ones, which involve a fee that matches the concrete service which you're getting. The first-class site hosting firms that have been around for a long time are revealing their prices and plan specifications in an objective manner, so that the client may know what indeed he is receiving. What's more, some of them provide a free extra with the website hosting package, such as the 1-click applications installer, accompanied by hundreds of charge-free web templates that are supplied by 'Miami Hosting'. Such site hosting firms do look after their reputation and that's why if you pick them, you can rest certain that you won't get hoaxed into paying for a plan that you cannot actually use.
What should I anticipate from a shared webspace hosting service?
The shared web space hosting solution is best for persons who want to host a normal web page, which is going to generate a small or medium amount of bandwidth every month. You cannot expect, though, that a shared hosting account will be sufficient for your needs, since as your business develops, your site will become more and more resource consuming. Hence, you will have to ultimately upgrade to a more feature-rich website hosting service like a semi-dedicated server, a VPS (aka a private virtual web server, or VPS), or why not a dedicated server. So, when choosing a web site hosting vendor, you should also reflect about how they can be of service to you, otherwise you might end up relocating your domain name manually to a separate supplier, which can cause web site complications and even extended downtime for your web site. Therefore, picking a web hosting provider such as 'Miami Hosting', which can supply you with the required domain name and hosting services as you grow, is vital and will save you lots of frustrations in the future.