Web Hosting Types

Free Web Hosting: No payment is required to host your site. Generally only simple pages will be hosted. You will not have PHP or MySQL available for forums or blogging packages. Free hosting is often supported by the host placing advertising on your site.

Shared Web Hosting: Your site is placed on the same server as other sites - usually ranging in number from hundreds or thousands. Sites share server resources, such as RAM and the CPU. If your site requires a large part of the system's resources, many hosts will require that you upgrade to a dedicated server or a virtual dedicated server.

Reseller Web Hosting: You become a web host. You buy a certain amount of server space and bandwidth at a wholesale price and sell smaller packages to the public. Many large hosts make it easy for people to set up reseller accounts. These are often bought by individuals who own a large number of websites.

A Virtual Dedicated Server: You buy space on a server that has been divided into virtual servers. Your site has its own dedicated space and its own dedicated call on system resources.

A Dedicated Server: You get full control (root access) of your own Web server

Co-location: You own the server. The hosting company provides the space that the server takes up in a datacenter.