The World Wide Web is a massive collection of web sites, all hosted on computers (called web servers) all over the world. The web server (computer) where your web site's html files, graphics, etc. reside is known as the web host. Web hosting clients simply upload their web sites to a shared (or dedicated) webserver, which the ISP maintains to ensure a constant, fast connection to the Internet.

A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own websites accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center. Webhosts can also provide data center space and connectivity to the Internet for servers they do not own to be located in their data center, called colocation.

Types of hosting

Internet hosting services can run Web servers; see Internet hosting services.

Hosting services limited to the Web:

• Free web hosting service: is free, (sometimes) advertisement-supported web hosting, and is sometimes limited when compared to paid hosting.
• Shared web hosting service: one's Web site is placed on the same server as many other sites, ranging from a few to hundreds or thousands. Typically, all domains may share a common pool of server resources, such as RAM and the CPU.
• Reseller web hosting: allows clients to become web hosts themselves. Resellers could function, for individual domains, under any combination of these listed types of hosting, depending on who they are affiliated with as a provider.
• Virtual Dedicated Server: slicing up a server into virtual servers. each user feels like they're on their own dedicated server, but they're actually sharing a server with many other users.
• Dedicated hosting service: the user gets his or her own Web server and gains full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, the user typically does not own the server.
• Colocation web hosting service: similar to the dedicated web hosting service, but the user owns the server; the hosting company provides physical space that the server takes up and takes care of the server. In most cases, the colocation provider may provide little to no support directly for their client's machine, providing only the electrical, Internet access, and storage facilities for the server.
• Clustered hosting: having multiple servers hosting the same content for better resource utilization. Wikipedia's own servers are a good example of this.