A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing web hosting services are sometimes called web hosts.

Typically, web hosting requires the following:

one or more servers to act as the host(s) for the sites; servers may be physical or virtual
colocation for the server(s), providing physical space, electricity, and Internet connectivity;
Domain Name System configuration to define name(s) for the sites and point them to the hosting server(s);
a web server running on the host;
for each site hosted on the server: