Selecting a suitable web host type for your website depends on various factors, such as, your website requirements, available resources, and expertise. For example, you may require programming experience if your business requires dedicated web hosting solutions, or if you have multiple websites where each has its own domain name you may wish to purchase a reseller account with which you can host all your websites, cost effectively.

Thus, depending on your level of experience or in house service availability you should select a hosting type that you can comfortably handle. Make sure that you sign up with a hosting company that would allow you to switch packages, either upgrade or downgrade, without having to pay a service fee or a penalty fee. Get as much information in writing as possible before to sign up, so instead of talking with the sales department for the whole transaction, try correspond with them via email for part of the communication, such as, when you are requesting product information, refund and guarantee policy if it is not readily posted on their website. The following are some descriptions of various types of web hosts:

Free Web Hosting Service - A free web hosting service is a web hosting service that is free, usually advertisement-supported and of limited functionality. Free web hosts will either provide a subdomain (yoursite.freehost.com) or a directory (freehost.com/yoursite). In contrast, paid web hosts will usually provide a Second-level domain along with the hosting (www.yourname.com). Some free hosts do allow use of separately-purchased domains. Rarely, a free host may also operate as a domain name registrar, but their registry services are usually more expensive than others.

Reseller Web Hosting Service - Reseller hosting is a form of web hosting wherein the account owner has the ability to use his/her allotted hard drive space and bandwidth to host websites on behalf of third parties. The reseller purchases the host's services wholesale and then sells them to his customers for a profit. The certain portion of hard drive and bandwidth is allocated to reseller account. In order to achieve this the reseller may rent a dedicated server from a hosting company or resell shared hosting services. If the latter is the case the reseller is simply given the permission to sell a certain amount of disk space and bandwidth to his own customers without renting a server from a web hosting company he signed for a reseller account with.

Dedicated Web Hosting Service - A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of Internet hosting where the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have full control over the server(s), including choice of operating system, hardware, etc. Server administration can usually be provided by the hosting company as an add-on service. In some cases a dedicated server can offer less overhead and a larger return on investment. Dedicated servers are most often housed in data centers, similar to colocation facilities, providing redundant power sources and HVAC systems. In contrast to colocation, the server hardware is owned by the provider and in some cases they will provide support for your operating system or applications.

Colocation Web Hosting Service - similar to the dedicated web hosting service, but the user owns the colocation server; the hosting company provides physical space that the server takes up and takes care of the server. This is the most powerful and expensive type of the web hosting service. 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. In most cases for colocation, the client would have his own administrator visit the data center on site to do any hardware upgrades or changes.

Shared Web Hosting Service - A shared web hosting service or virtual hosting service refers to a web hosting service where many websites reside on one web server connected to the Internet. Each site "sits" on its own partition, or section of the server to keep it separate from other sites. This is generally the most economical option for hosting as many people share the overall cost of server maintenance.