With virtual web hosting, you get a professionally managed server at an affordable price. This type of hosting is particularly good for smaller ecommerce websites or sites that are made up of mostly static pages.

Hosting companies that offer virtual hosting have their own technical support teams that take care of any problems for you. Even novices with little or no technical skills can use these services to host their website.

Companies that provide virtual hosting usually offer different packages, with different options and services. You can choose the package that best suits your needs, at a price you can afford.

Each package will offer a certain amount of disk space, bandwidth, databases, email accounts, etc. In some cases, they'll also include site building software that will let you set up your website in minutes.

You should look for a host that provides 24 hour technical support and unlimited file transfers for updating and maintaining your website.

Many hosting companies also include web statistics software with their virtual hosting plans. This software is very helpful as it lets you track the most popular pages on your website, where people are coming from (Google, Yahoo, other websites, etc.), where most of your visitors are located in the world, etc.

Most virtual hosting accounts include some kind of "control panel" for managing your website. These control panels give you a simple graphical interface to many of the features of your server. These are especially valuable to anyone who is not very technical and doesn't have access to a server administrator on a permanent basis.

What You Need to Watch Out For

When choosing a virtual hosting company, there are a few things you need to watch out for.

First, make sure they are not resellers but actually host the sites on their own servers. Some hosting companies are reselling other companies' services and if you ever have a problem, they're just a middleman between you and the true host. This can add to the length of time to get problems resolved.

Make sure that their technical support staff are properly trained and readily available. If possible, try to contact them prior to signing up and see how helpful they are.

If you can get some references for other webmasters using the hosting company, contact them to see whether or not they're happy with the service they've received.

John Lenaghan writes about free web site hosting and other website hosting topics on the Hosting Report website. Find out more at http://www.hostingreport.org