First, there is the Shared Web Hosting. This type of hosting means a location is shared by many websites. All the websites in a shared server will share the resources such as space, bandwidth, IP address and so on.
Although there is much controversy around the whole domain name business one thing is for sure...can you really afford to let someone else capitalize on your company domain name or names. The number of domain names is increasing with most of them linked to geographical locations such as .nl for Holland, .de for Germany and .FR for France.
The selection of platform and database engine is connected. If your web host offers hosting on the Linux platform, the script language is PHP and the database is MySQL. For Windows based hosting, ASP/.NET and MSSQL is often used. Unless you are a programmer with special demands in regard to platform, this selection doesn't matter much to you. More web hosts offer Linux hosting because it is cheaper, hence Affordable Web Hosting.
It also comes with fantastico, cpanel. All this for about $109 annually which is pretty cheap. Please note this hosting plan is no longer available and is replaced with multisite dynamite plan. It is basically the same as my previous plan except for more diskspace and bandwidth. As I'm writing this, they have a promotion where you can get this hosting plan for 2 years at only $149 which I consider to be a good deal.
Get into Shared Web Hosting UK 2.0 (aka Social Networking)! Start a blog (you are reading an example), post a video on YouTube, set up a company page on Facebook, post press releases online, write and post articles about your area of expertise...The possibilities are growing all the time and the more work you put in the better the results you will achieve. Don't forget to link everything back to your site!!
The range of pricing and features included in web hosting packages are pretty wide. You will want a fair balance of features and quality that will suit your needs. As with any other product, cheap usually gets less quality. On the other hand some pricing can be exorbitant without any special value.
Finally, don't change web host at inappropriate times. Changing web hosts can mean a lot of technical changes and even loss of data. Because of this, it becomes all the more important for you to think things through before deciding on a web host. You need to find one with whom you can partner with for a long time.