A definition of web site hosting

The most elemental and universally used type of web hosting is the shared web hosting solution. It represents a means to host your website without having to understand much about programming and administering a web server. In addition to this, it's also the cheapest form of webspace hosting and it's in fact affordable for everybody. Still, what is shared web space hosting?

What is shared hosting?

As the name implies, the shared web space hosting service is a type of service where plenty of users share the system resources of one and the same hosting server. This suggests that all hosting server components like CPU, hard disk drives, RAM, network interface cards etc. are apportioned among the users whose accounts are on that same web hosting server. This is mainly rendered tenable by opening separate accounts for the separate clients and allocating specific limits and resource usage quotas for each of them. Those limits are set in order to prevent the customers from interfering with each other's accounts and, of course, to hinder the server from overburdening. Normally, shared website hosting customers do not have full root-level access to the web hosting server's config files, which essentially denotes that they do not have access to anything else on the server beside their own hosting account. The web page hosting features that each account may use are fixed by the hosting vendor that owns the server and by the respective hosting plan. That entails the second vital question:

How are the shared web hosting servers split among the users?

Hosting suppliers that distribute shared website hosting services typically have different website hosting plans. Those plans contain diverse amounts of website hosting resources and specifications, which in fact define the restrictions that a hosting plan will have. The client may choose between the individual web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he believes will suit him best. The webspace hosting package will then define what restrictions the user's account will have, once opened. The costs and the specs of the webspace hosting plans are chosen by the very hosting corporation. Depending on the policy of the vendor, the shared web site hosting solution falls into two categories - the free hosting service and the regular shared service, most recently very popular among "cPanel hosting" corporations as a cloud web hosting one. It's not possible to tell, which one is better, since they are quite different from one another and they indeed depend on the marketing policy of the specific provider and, of course, the needs of the specific user.

What is the contrast between the free and the standard shared hosting service?

Of course, the principal difference between the free of charge and the paid service is in the amount of resources that they contain. Free site hosting suppliers are not capable of keeping a big amount of servers, therefore, they plainly accommodate more users on a single web hosting server by lowering the quantity of resources offered by the accounts. This will be efficient only on condition that the servers are kept under surveillance and tackled properly, because the large amount of accounts may make the web server crash time and time again. Most of the free webspace hosting suppliers, however, ignore the quality of the service and as a result, it's very hard to come across a free of charge website hosting service that's actually worth the time. The top free hosting companies commonly provide free client support even to the free web site hosting customers, because they want their web sites to expand so that they eventually upgrade to a paid website hosting plan, which offers more hosting features. Such corporation, for example, is FreeHostia.com, which is one of the largest and oldest free web space hosting suppliers in the world.

At the same time, established shared web hosting corporations like Elite Hosting, for example, are able to keep a lot of hosting servers and hence, they may afford to provide much more feature-rich web site hosting plans. Of course, that influences the cost of the web space hosting plans. Paying a higher fee for a web site hosting service, however, does not necessarily imply that this plan has a finer quality. The best services are the balanced ones, which offer a price that matches the real service which you're receiving. The top website hosting providers that have been around for quite a while are listing their prices and package configurations in a realistic manner, so that the client may familiar with what indeed he is obtaining. What's more, some of them give a free bonus with the website hosting package, such as the 1-click applications installer, accompanied by 100's of cost-free design templates that are offered by 'Elite Hosting'. Such webspace hosting distributors do look after their reputation and that's why if you go with them, you can be calm that you won't get duped into purchasing a plan that you cannot in fact avail of.

What should I anticipate from a shared web hosting service?

The shared web site hosting service is best for people who want to host an average web portal, which is going to consume a small or medium amount of traffic each month. You cannot expect, however, that a shared web space hosting account will last you a lifetime, because as your business enlarges, your web page will become more and more resource consuming. Hence, you will have to ultimately migrate to a more feature-rich hosting solution such as a semi-dedicated server, a VPS (a.k.a. a virtual private hosting server, or VPS), or why not a dedicated server. So, when selecting a hosting supplier, you should also ponder about how they can be of service to you, or else you might end up transferring your domain name manually to a different provider, which can bring about site problems and even continued downtime for your web page. Therefore, selecting a webspace hosting supplier such as 'Elite Hosting', which can supply you with the needed domain name and hosting services as you grow, is vital and will spare you a lot of inconveniences in the long run.