Web site hosting is a part of every web site. Every web site has a "home" on the internet - that's what hosting does: it provides your site a home. Depending upon your site, your choice in hosting provides:

• simple hosting, just a basic web site
• simple hosting with e-mail at your domain.com
• interactive forms your visitors can use to contact you
• interactive features such as tell a friend about this site, or forums, message boards, etc.
• e-cards, postcards, e-books or other viral marketing tools
• database interactivity or e-commerce for your catalog of products
• CMS or content management systems that allow you to update your site without knowing html
• Statistics and tracking of the traffic to your site, ways to measure how it's doing
• Webmail to access your e-mail from any computer

Budget Hosting:

Shared hosting starts at $9.95/month and includes web mail, a control panel.

Mid-range Hosting:

VPS Hosting: a Virtual Private Server offers flexibility that you don't get with shared hosting, including the ability to install specific software, change the configuration of the web server and more. Great for e-commerce or other interactive sites.

Dedicated Server:

When your online business outgrows the other options and needs dedicated resources, or a specific configuration.