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With more advanced types of hosting, your Web site resides on equipment dedicated to your company. The equipment can be provided by either you or the hosting service.

"Dedicated" service refers to when the service provides the space, equipment, and Internet connection. All you need to do is provide the files and data for your site. "Co-located" service typically refers to when a service provides the space to house the equipment and the Internet connection only. Setting up and maintaining your equipment becomes your responsibility.

You may need to go with these advanced hosting options if you find the shared options don't offer the application support or flexibility you need. For example, while you'll find that you can interface with a Microsoft Access database in a shared hosting environment, Oracle is nowhere to be found. (At least we haven't found a service that offers it.)

In addition, if your site is increasingly becoming critical to your business operations, having the fixed bandwidth can ensure that your site does not appear slow to users. With a shared server, other sites residing on the server can drive a surge in usage that in turn negatively impacts your site performance. You also get rid of the risk of server shutdown due to other user error.

Finally, if you have much more than 150 MB of files, dedicated site hosting is your best bet. The costs of a shared server can be greater than it's worth at that point.

Any way you cut it, this type of hosting is considerably more costly than shared site hosting. Even without factoring in the cost of equipment, you should expect to spend at least a few hundred dollars a month for hosting. In contrast, you can have a shared Web site for as little as $10 per month.

The amount of space you need and the expected and maximum bandwidth usage can affect your monthly rate. You can also incur additional costs for exceeding your contracted bandwidth rate.

Other features like site monitoring, backup service, and redundant power supplies can add hundreds of dollars per month to the basic service fee.