A description of hosting

The most elemental and universally used variety of web hosting is the shared web hosting solution. It constitutes a means to host your web page without having to know much about programming and administrating a web server. What's more, it's also the most inexpensive form of site hosting and it's indeed affordable for everybody. Still, what is shared web site hosting?

What is shared web space hosting?

As the name suggests, the shared hosting solution is a type of service where plenty of users share the resources of one and the same web server. This goes to say that all server elements like CPU, hard drives, RAM, network interface cards etc. are divided among the users whose accounts are on that very same hosting server. This is mostly made tenable by setting up different accounts for the separate clients and assigning some limits and resource usage quotas for each of them. Those limitations are set in order to hinder the users from meddling with each other's accounts and, of course, to prevent the hosting server from overloading. Normally, shared webspace hosting users do not have complete root access to the web server's configuration files, which primarily signifies that they do not have access to anything else on the web hosting server but their own shared web hosting account. The site hosting resources that each account may avail of are fixed by the hosting firm that possesses the web server and by the respective website hosting package. That leads to the second vital question:

How are the shared hosting web servers divided among the clients?

Web hosting suppliers that supply shared hosting services normally have various webspace hosting packages. Those plans offer diverse quotas of hosting features and specifications, which in fact set the limitations that a web hosting plan will include. The user may choose between the individual web hosting plans and sign up for the one that he thinks will befit him best. The website hosting plan will then define what restrictions the user's account will have, once created. The costs and the specifications of the website hosting plans are chosen by the given web hosting distributor. Based on the policy of the distributor, the shared website hosting service can be divided into 2 types - the free hosting solution and the classic shared service, most recently very popular among "cPanel hosting" companies as a cloud web hosting one. It's impossible to claim, which one is better, since they are very different from each other and they actually are determined by the business policy of the given provider and, of course, the requirements of the given user.

What is the difference between the free and the classic shared site hosting solution?

Of course, the major difference between the free of charge and the paid service is in the quantity of resources that they involve. Free site hosting providers are not able to maintain a big amount of servers, hence, they simply accommodate more customers on one server by lowering the quantity of resources offered by the accounts. This will be efficient only in case the web servers are kept under surveillance and handled appropriately, since the huge amount of accounts may make the server crash time and time again. The majority of the free webspace hosting companies, though, neglect the quality of the service and as a result, it's very hard to discover a free of cost web hosting service that's actually worth the effort. The top free hosting suppliers usually provide free technical support even to the free hosting clients, since they want their web pages to get bigger so that they eventually move to a paid webspace hosting package, which offers more hosting features. Such company, for example, is FreeHostia.com, which is among the largest and eldest free website hosting providers worldwide.

On the other hand, traditional shared web hosting firms such as Apple Hosting, for example, are able to keep lots of servers and so, they are able to offer much more powerful webspace hosting packages. Of course, that influences the cost of the web space hosting plans. Paying a higher fee for a website hosting service, however, does not necessarily mean that this plan has a finer quality. The most advantageous solutions are the balanced ones, which involve a price that corresponds to the actual service which you're obtaining. The top web site hosting firms that have been around for a long time are showing their price tags and package specs in a realistic manner, so that the client may be informed of what exactly he is getting. Moreover, some of these provide a free extra with the site hosting plan, like the 1-click applications installer, accompanied by hundreds of charge-free website themes that are supplied by 'Apple Hosting'. Such web hosting firms do look after their good name and that's why if you choose them, you can rest calm that you won't get duped into buying a package that you cannot in fact avail of.

What should I expect from a shared webspace hosting service?

The shared web hosting service is best for people who desire to host a normal web site, which is going to devour a small or medium amount of bandwidth every month. You cannot anticipate, however, that a shared hosting account will last you a lifetime, because as your business grows, your web page will become more and more demanding. So, you will have to ultimately migrate to a more powerful hosting service like a semi-dedicated server, a VPS (aka a private virtual server, or VPS), or why not a dedicated server. Therefore, when choosing a web hosting distributor, you should also think about how they can be of service to you, otherwise you might end up relocating your domain name manually to a separate vendor, which can create site predicaments and even extended downtime for your web page. Therefore, choosing a site hosting supplier such as 'Apple Hosting', which can supply you with the required domain name and hosting services as you grow, is essential and will spare you lots of annoyances in the long run.