A definition of hosting
The most elemental and universally used type of web hosting is the shared web hosting solution. It constitutes a means to host your web site without having to know much about programming and handling a web server. What's more, it's also the most economical form of hosting and it's very affordable for anybody. Nevertheless, what is shared web site hosting?
What is shared hosting?
As the name signifies, the shared web hosting solution is a kind of service where lots of customers share the system resources of the same web server. This indicates that all web server constituents such as CPU, hard disk drives, RAM, network interface cards and so on, are divided among the clients whose accounts are on that very same web hosting server. This is mostly made possible by setting up separate accounts for the different customers and imposing some restrictions and quotas for each of them. Those limitations are set in order to prevent the users from meddling with each other's accounts and, of course, to prevent the web server from overloading. Normally, shared webspace hosting customers do not have full root-level access to the hosting server's configuration files, which essentially indicates that they cannot access anything else on the hosting server apart from their own website page hosting account. The web space hosting features that each account may avail of are set by the web hosting supplier that possesses the web hosting server and by the respective web hosting package. That gives rise to the second essential question:
How are the shared web hosting servers divided among the customers?
Hosting vendors that supply shared web hosting services commonly have different site hosting packages. Those packages offer diverse amounts of web site hosting features and specifications, which in fact set the restrictions that a web space hosting account will have. The customer may pick between the different web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he deems will fit him best. The website hosting package will then determine what limits the user's account will have, once opened. The prices and the specs of the site hosting packages are specified by the actual web hosting company. Based on the politics of the company, the shared website hosting solution falls into 2 categories - the free hosting service and the common shared solution, currently very popular among "cPanel hosting" distributors as a cloud web hosting one. It's not possible to judge, which one is better, since they are quite different from each other and they really depend on the business tactics of the particular corporation and, of course, the requirements of the given client.
What is the contrast between the free of charge and the typical shared web page hosting solution?
Of course, the primary difference between the free of charge and the paid service is in the amount of features that they include. Free webspace hosting corporations are not capable of maintaining an immense amount of hosting servers, hence, they plainly accommodate more customers on one single server by decreasing the amount of system resources provided by the accounts. This will be efficient only if the servers are kept under surveillance and maintained properly, because the great number of accounts may cause the server to crash on a regular basis. Most of the free website hosting suppliers, however, ignore the quality of the service and hence, it's quite difficult to discover a free hosting solution that's actually worth the time. The top free hosting providers normally provide free client support even to the free web space hosting clients, since they want their web sites to enlarge so that they eventually move to a paid site hosting plan, which offers more web site hosting resources. Such distributor, for instance, is FreeHostia.com, which is among the largest and eldest free website hosting vendors in the world.
On the other hand, established shared web hosting suppliers such as Xtreme Server, for instance, may afford to maintain multiple servers and therefore, they may afford to offer much more powerful web space hosting plans. Of course, that affects the cost of the webspace hosting plans. Paying a higher fee for a site hosting package, though, does not automatically mean that this account has a better quality. The best services are the balanced ones, which offer a fee that corresponds to the concrete service which you're obtaining. The top web site hosting vendors that have been around for quite a while are listing their prices and plan specs in an objective way, so that the client may know what exactly he is getting. In addition, some of these offer a free bonus with the webspace hosting plan, like the 1-click applications installer, complemented with 100's of cost-free site skins that are furnished by 'Xtreme Server'. Such web site hosting vendors do care about their good name and that's why if you pick them, you can rest confident that you won't get duped into paying for an account that you cannot actually make use of.
What should I expect from a shared web hosting solution?
The shared site hosting solution is best for those who want to host a normal web site, which is going to use a small or medium amount of web traffic every month. You cannot anticipate, though, that a shared webspace hosting account will last you a lifetime, because as your business grows bigger, your web page will become more and more demanding. Therefore, you will have to ultimately upgrade to a more feature-rich web space hosting service like a semi-dedicated server, a VPS (a.k.a. a virtual server, or VPS), or why not a dedicated server. So, when choosing a web site hosting vendor, you should also ponder about how they can be of service to you, otherwise you might end up migrating your domain name manually to a different provider, which can create website predicaments and even extended downtime for your web page. Hence, going with a website hosting supplier like 'Xtreme Server', which can present you with the required domain name and hosting services as you get bigger, is essential and will spare you a lot of difficulties in the future.