Perhaps you want to know what are the hosting companies more important and the relationship between these. In webhosting.info you can see ranks for every country.

In United States, there is a big leader: WildWestDomanains.com. Godaddy is behind this company… with near 30% of US hosting market.

1
WILDWESTDOMAINS.COM
29.5452 %
19,240,570

2
ENOM.COM
7.2477 %
4,719,892

3
NETWORKSOLUTIONS.COM
4.1146 %
2,679,512

4
YAHOO.COM
3.964 %
2,581,460

5
ONEANDONE.COM
3.634 %
2,366,517

6
REGISTER.COM
2.484 %
1,617,638

7
DSREDIRECTION.COM
2.4646 %
1,605,031

8
BUYDOMAINS.COM
1.2826 %
835,242

9
DNSNAMESERVER.ORG
1.2067 %
785,844

10
PARKED.COM
1.186 %
772,369

11
DREAMHOST.COM
1.1174 %
727,692

12
BCENTRAL.COM
0.913 %
594,598

13
BLUEHOST.COM
0.816 %
531,403

14
FASTPARK.NET
0.7002 %
456,001

15
DOTSTER.COM
0.6872 %
447,548

GNUPanel is a completely free (GPL) replacement for proprietary web hosting automation software. GNUPanel is under development, focusing on translation efforts that permit the entire free software community to participate. Currently, GNUPanel is Debian-centric, however, a distro-agnostic approach is planned.

It is written mainly in PHP 5 and initially designed to run on 32 or 64 bits Debian GNU/linux.
The administrator can manage a web hosting server, create public and private hosting accounts, accept Paypal, Cuentadigital and Dineromail payments, send messages to users, create redirections, use the integrated support ticket system, control bandwidth, disk space and define policies for accounts suspension.

The users can use the regular functions to create mail and FTP accounts, databases, directories protection, etc. In addition they can make payments, place domains in parking and activate or deactivate in each subdomain PHP directives like safe_mode and register_globals.
GNUPanel stores its configuration on a postgreSQL 8.1 database and provides three web interfaces with SSL access at user, reseller and administrator level.

Godaddy is a company that is focused in domaining services. But it is also an important hosting company. Now, we will known more about his importance:

GoDaddy.com is the world’s largest domain name registrar and is the flagship company of The Go Daddy Group, Inc.

The Go Daddy Group of companies also includes Wild West Domains, Inc., a reseller of domains and domain-related products and services (like cheap web hosting…); Domains by Proxy, a private registration service; Starfield Technologies, a research and development affiliate; and Blue Razor Domains, a membership-based discount registrar.

As an ICANN-accredited domain registrar, Go Daddy has more names under management than any other registrar, offers products at prices up to 70% less than the competition and supports them all with world-class 24/7 live customer service.

We are the sole developer and proprietor of our technology, do not license any products from others, and do not outsource or offshore any of our operations. This enables us to provide better support and ensure the most advanced and competitively-priced products and services available today (low-cost domain names, low-cost hosting…).

Founded by Bob Parsons in 1997, The Go Daddy Group has grown to include more than 28.4 million domains under management. We offer a complete product line, including comprehensive hosting solutions, Web site creation tools, Secure SSL certificates, personalized email with spam and anti-phishing filtering, e-commerce tools and more.

As they say: Hostgator is a privately owned company founded in 2002 that has no debt, is very profitable, and has NO intentions of selling any time soon (their hostings are safe). They provide service to over 1,000,000 websites on their shared and reseller plans. They are the world’s leading provider of hosting’s reseller accounts with over 20,000 resellers who have chosen them to provide the network, servers, and support required to launch a hosting business.

Hostgator’ services are:

Linux Web Hosting

HostGator is one of the world’s top 10 largest web hosting companies with more than 1,000,000 hosted domains. We have over 160 employees to provide you around-the-clock superior support. We are the perfect choice whether you are looking for business, personal, or even Fortune 500 hosting.

Every web hosting plan comes with a 45 day money back guarantee, 99.9% uptime guarantee, and is fully guaranteed by the owner himself. If you ever have a problem with regular support of web hosting just ask that your ticket be assigned to Brent and he will personally take the time to give you the VIP attention that you deserve.

Reseller Web Hosting

You would be amazed how easy, lucrative, and cheap it is to become your very own web hosting company! They give you all the tools and support needed to have you up and running in just a few minutes time. All of their reseller hosting plans allow you to create unlimited web sites under your own packages, prices, and brand. The best part is that you keep 100% of the money you collect.

How does reseller hosting work?

You have a reseller hosting account control panel called Web Host Manager. WHM is where you go to create your customer accounts. After filling in their account information you click “create hosting.” This will instantly set them up with their very own control panel called cPanel. This is where they will go to administer their website. Once they are logged into cPanel they can create subdomains, email addresses, change passwords, and much more without requiring any help from you or us.

Dedicated Servers

A HostGator server is more than just a server, it is a fully managed solution designed to take your business of hosting to the next level. Not only do we give you management valued at over $100 but we also include cPanel for free with every dedicated server. Your server will be provisioned, secured, and delivered within 24 hours of purchase (you will have the better hosting).

Having a dedicated server for web hosting will provide your sites with a higher level of security, speed, and uptime. You will have the capability to go far beyond the resource limitations found in a shared hosting environment.

I have found a definition for “host” that I think is very interesting, and can solves a lot of questions and dudes.

What is host? (http://searchcio-midmarket.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid183_gci212254,00.html)

The term “host” is used in several contexts, in each of which it has a slightly different meaning:

1) In Internet protocol specifications, the term “host” means any computer that has full two-way access to other computers on the Internet. A host has a specific “local or host number” that, together with the network number, forms its unique IP address. If you use Point-to-Point Protocol to get access to your access provider, you have a unique IP address for the duration of any connection you make to the Internet and your computer is a host for that period. In this context, a “host” is a node in a network.

2) For companies or individuals with a Web site, a host is a computer with a Web server that serves the pages for one or more Web sites. A host can also be the company that provides that service, which is known as hosting.

3) In IBM and perhaps other mainframe computer environments, a host is a mainframe computer (which is now usually referred to as a “large server”). In this context, the mainframe has intelligent or “dumb” workstations attached to it that use it as a host provider of services. (This does not mean that the host only has “servers” and the workstations only have “clients.” The server/client relationship is a programming model independent of this contextual usage of “host.”)

4) In other contexts, the term generally means a device or program that provides services to some smaller or less capable device or program.

I have read in Gigaom.com:

“Cisco Systems, the San Jose, Calif.-based company that makes a living selling plumbing for the Internet (amongst other things), has come out with a prediction: Traffic on the world’s networks will increase (annually) 46 percent from 2007 to 2012, nearly doubling every two years. As a result, there will be an annual bandwidth demand of approximately 522 exabytes2, or more than half a zettabyte.”

I think it is obviously an importnant fact in order to see how Internet services business and hosting companies can grow exponentially. This is a good moment for web hosting enterprising people.

If you need a web hosting for a new web or for a web with a small traffic of users, perhaps a website with 2000 visits per day or less, you can see the bid of the hosting company “Exclusive Hosting”. However, if you get more visits or if you are hosting too many images, you will have problems with the host (this hosting is not adapted to your needs).

But in the future we can change the hosting company or contract or recruit another plan in the company. Exclusve Hosting offers a Web hosting for only 2.95 dollars a month, and we will have guaranteed a service uptime of 99.9% and what is most attractive: a monthly transfer of up to 500Gb.

We will have a disk space of 50,000 MB, a database (only 30MB), a free domain (the main domains: Com. Net. Org. Info…), thirty subdomains and an easy panel of administration that will allow you to install blogs, CMS and forums with just one click.

Yahoo! web hosting only cost $8.96/month for the first three months (discount for new customers) and after it, $11.95/month. Moreover, we can pay with paypal, masterard, visa…

I think it’s a competitive host because with this price you will have unlimited disk space and unlimited data transfer.  Thi is very interesting for our web projects.

The conditions of this hosting service are:

• You will be billed for a full 3 month term when you sign up.
• After 3 months, your subscription will be renewed automatically for another three months. And this process will continue automatically as long as you maintain your account with Yahoo! Web Hosting Services.
• They have a 30 Day Satisfaction Guarantee, that allows you to cancel your order within 30 days without any penalty fees.

The features of the web hosting are:

• Free, easy-to-use tools to build your web site
• Hosting of your web site
• 24-hour toll-free phone support
• Unlimited disk space, which allows you to build as many web pages as you want
• Unlimited data transfer, which allows you to support as many visitors as you want
• 1,000 business email addresses (such as jimhanks@learn2yoga.com)
• Unlimited email storage

You can see all the features in yahoo!.

I want to recommend you the services of 1 and 1 if you are finding a hosting where you can pay with paypal:

1&1 Internet Inc., the world’s largest web host by known servers, launched a new facility which allows new customers to pay using PayPal when signing up and existing customers to choose PayPal as their continuous payment method.

PayPal® is an account-based system that lets individuals and businesses send and receive money online. Users can set up a PayPal® account using their credit or debit card and make secure purchases without revealing their credit card number or financial information. PayPal supports both credit cards and debit cards including VISA, MasterCard, AMEX, VISA Electron etc.

If users do not already have a PayPal® account, they can create one during the 1&1 check out process by selecting the PayPal® option in the check out process and following the step by step instructions to complete their order.

As you can read in DreamHost’s web, one of the most important web hosting,  they  are trying very hard to be more respectful with the nature:

DreamHost is carbon neutral. We’ve calculated the impact of everything that DreamHost uses and leaves behind in the course of our daily work. All of the resources that we use in order to host webpages - paper in the office, electricity for our servers, even the gas in our cars that bring us to the office - leaves behind some kind of soul-sucking residue in the world.

When we learned that running DreamHost generated as much carbon dioxide as 545 average-size homes we realized we had to do something to neutralize our emissions.

With a bit of research we found the most effective approach begins with resource conservation: turning off the lights, reducing travel, printing on both sides of the page. Efforts are being ramped up here daily to do what we do with less. The next step is to use clean, renewable energy in our hosting servers in the datacenters. Without the option to put up solar panels or connect with a green power utility for us this means purchasing Renewable Energy Credits. Finally, to neutralize those unavoidable emissions we’ve invested in Emission Reduction Credits (a.k.a. “offsets”) which guarantee our remaining impact is effectively erased. A third-party-certification? Never fear. The credits we use to green our energy consumption and neutralize the rest of our emissions meet the highest standards in the industry. Click to view our up-to-date Certificate of Carbon Neutralization.