The ranges of web hosting companies available in the market are extremely broad and extensive. Choice of web hosting depends on the nature, type and purpose of the website that is required. A definition of whether it is a hobby, blog or e-commerce will provide the route to choices from the vast range of hosting providers.

Common website hosting is either shared, free or dedicated hosting. Free web hosting services usually place advertisements on the user's webpage. This becomes really annoying for visitors.

Others that provide support, and a range of options together with bandwidth charge a monthly fee.

Shared Web Hosting

The most common web-hosting plan is shared web hosting. Shared web site hosting allows more than one site on the same server. The web hosts act as the system administration and provides server maintenance. Shared hosting benefits range from programming features such as ASP, PHP and MySQL, as well as a provision a large bandwidth with multiple e-mail address. Shared web hosting allows a user to have their individual domain name in contrast to free web hosting. Shared hosting allows for a hosting company to offer very affordable web hosting to their clients. Having more users on one server which greatly reduces overhead costs offers Shared web hosting client cost-efficient web hosting for is more available and affordable for most people who want representation on the internet and then in addition provides the most user friendly options.

Free Webhosting

Free hosting is a basic web hosting service. Banners ads are very common on website hosting on this level. (For example Geocities or Angel fire). There are however free web site hosting providers in existence today that provide excellent options but these are limited. Free hosting plans makes limited provisions, there is no MySQL, database usage, or multiple e-mail accounts, and there are no possibilities to run any scripting language. This option of domain one receives in free web hosting is typically a sub-domain (http://yoursite.webhost.com) or a directory (http://www.webhost.com/~yoursite). A recommendation is to avoid these web host services. A small investment for cheap web hosting which allows you to get your own site will bring far more satisfaction.

Dedicated Web Hosting

Dedicated hosting is a recommended option for individuals who want more storage, bandwidth and control over the server. The advantages of having a dedicated web hosting site is much more extensive as you have extensive databases and email addresses and unlimited bandwidth. A dedicated server plan offers the user bandwidth of 500 GB to 1 TB monthly. Also crucial knowledge is to have is that there are two main types dedicated web-hosting plans, which is either managed or unmanaged. Managed hosting is hosting that is controlled by purely by the hosting company. In unmanaged dedicated web hosting, the user is the sole server administrator, the user is then permitted a greatest amount of control and flexibility.

The function of the website usually determine the types of web host. The features, support, reliability, and control usually decide the pricing of a hosting account.