In the recent days, the popularity of internet has grown immensely. The number of homes with computers has increased and so have the number of users. With all this comes the increase in use of internet for business and trade applications. A wide range of online businesses have been set up in the recent years to sell all kinds of items. Apart from products, there are also a few websites which sell or resource information to the internet users. For setting up any kind of website, the main prerequisite is a web host.

A web hosting service is one which provides its clients some space on its web server which they can use of setting up and running a website of their choice which can be accessed through the World Wide Web. A large number of web hosting services have come up. Most of them also provide internet connectivity to their clients. Though some Internet Service Providers give free web hosting services to their clients, the storage place given by them might be sufficient just to run a personal home page. For obtaining additional features like data base support and application platform, a web hosting service providing complex features might be needed.

The various types of web hosting services found today are:

1) Free web hosting service: This service provides limited storage space and no other additional features like data base support.

2) Shared web hosting service: This type of service supports many websites on the same server, all of which may use the same resources.

3) Reseller web hosting service: In this type of service, clients could themselves become web hosts again and resell their storage space on the server to other clients.

4) Virtual dedicated service: Though all clients may use the same server, they may not realize this because their servers have been virtually separated.

5) Dedicated housing service: In this type of service, the client can rent or lease a web server and own complete control over it.

6) Colocation web hosting service: In this case, the client can buy the server and virtually own it. He can use it resources for any purpose.

The efficiency of a web hosting service can be analyzed by studying the uptime and downtime of its servers. Downtime indicates the %time in a year when the server will be down for maintenance. Uptime, on the contrary indicates the servers' running time in a year.