Any product or service that requires storage or access on the internet will use the services of a web hosting company to do this. The service they provide is normally chargeable, for obvious reasons but it is possible for personal websites to be hosted for free. What happens is a hosting company allows another person or company to have (either paid or for free) a certain amount of space on a device called a server where other people can then view whatever you want them to, including a website.

Many types exist, some provide free hosting but with these types you pay the price of having restricted facilities that usually allow the likes of blogs, email and basic websites to be accessed. When a person realizes they want to host additional sites and store other digital products, they may find that the range of facilities for unpaid web hosting plans is too limited. There is a huge range of services available and often comparison sites are the best place to search as prices do vary considerably and you must really know in advance what type of service you need

In the early days you may be quite happy to have your files on a server which is shared by many others while you try their hosting services. Once you are comfortable with the service level then it might be worth upgrading to a dedicated server. However, all this is academic if you haven't registered a domain name that you can use in conjunction with the web hosting and to send your files to. A file is anything that is stored on the server and can include images, documents, programs, video or audio files, in fact anything that can be stored digitally; prices for storage continue to fall so limits are constantly rising.

Web hosting also provides the facility to have your own email address unlike those supplied by Google and Yahoo for example, this means, your e-mail address is exclusive to your website. Having your own email addresses are an important sign that a person or company is serious about their internet presence and provides a sense of credibility which cannot be achieved with the many free service providers available. The next thing to consider with your hosting package is how much information will be stored on the server that can be downloaded from your website as it will use a facility called bandwidth; the greater amount of files stored that can be accessed, the greater amount of bandwidth will be required.

Your visitors will have trouble visiting your web site or using its facilities if you settle for a small amount of bandwidth. If you have only a small web site this may not matter, except when you add big files, images, video or audio. Then your bandwidth will be used up very quickly. You may decide to become your own web host but with the security issues involved, unless you are up to date and knowledgeable in this area, it is not recommended.