There are a numerous different hosting types, and in order to determine the hosting package you need, you will first have to find out which type of hosting you are after.
The types of hosting packages are discussed below and although to many the terminology of hosting types and packages may be simple, to those to whom hosting is less common the guide below will hopefully be helpful.
Basic shared hosting
This is basically a no frills package which will allow the hosting of your website and will tend to offer a small amount of webspace. You can often get this included within your broadband package from your internet service provider free of charge.
These are perfect for simple websites, such as one showing family photo's or for someone that is new to hosting and can't warrant the ongoing expense.
Shared hosting
Often called web hosting or website hosting. This is a more feature rich version of the no frills package above and offers features such as sitebuilder to make building your website simple, web templates to allow you to simply put your information in a standard format with the hard work done for you, website statistics to track visitors as well as numerous other features.
This is the most popular form of hosting variation, and is basically where your website is hosted on a server with a number of other websites.
Shared or web hosting is used by a wide range of people and companies, including individuals running there personal web pages, small companies advertising there products or services and even large professional companies. Every company now needs a web presence in order to operate efficiently and having a web hosting package is an easy and relatively cheap way to ensure that their web site is available for everyone to see and is subject to the additional resilience that the company itself may not be able to provide.
Colocation
This type of hosting is where your server is hosted in a data centre and is therefore protected by the resilience of the specialist's premises. In this scenario you would have to provide the physical piece of kit (the server) yourself and manage it yourself, the hosting company just provides the premises for which to host your server.
This is most often used by companies who have an IT department or people who can look after the servers, but want somewhere to store their data whether it is the primary store or back up to help in risk management.
Virtual server hosting
In this case the hosting provider would provide the server where you want your data hosted, the server is then shared amongst a number of customers. Although the server is shared, the hosting companies tend to provide dedicated processing and dedicated space.
This is ideal for businesses who don't want their to manage the server and monitor it themselves, but want to keep costs down. Virtual servers often provide the same service as physical servers but at a lower cost due to the economies in scale achieved by buying bigger servers to share rather than numerous smaller dedicated servers.
Physical server hosting
This is the same principal as virtual server hosting, but the server is dedicated to the once customer/company and not just dedicated in terms of processing and space. The server is managed and monitored by the hosting company enabling the company to focus on running its business.
Physical, or dedicated servers tend to be more expensive as the server is wholly for use by one customer, hence the economies of scale are not achieved. The other advantage of server hosting (over colocation) other than the monitoring and management of the server is the price paid for the kit, the hosting company is likely to be able to get it cheaper (than an individual company) due to the volumes they operate.
Note that there is a wide range of packages for both physical and virtual servers, which can vary dramatically in price. The price you pay will depend on the server required, speed and storage requirements, security and resilience of the center and the level of support the provider offers.
Whatever your reason for needing a hosting package there will be a type of hosting that is most suitable for you.