For a basic, personal website, it used to be popular to get free web hosting by allowing your host to put ads on your pages.  Nowadays, there are a lot more options for affordable web hosting, and people are moving away from the free hosting with ads.

If you are looking for affordable web hosting for a business website, you want your hosting to be affordable, but not low quality.  Look for guarantees of uptime when you shop around.  Look for a more comprehensive package that offers database support and the ability to use application platforms such as PHP and Java.

Chances are, a business website may offer product listings online, and you need a database package, plus ability to handle application languages to make the database connect to your website live and show pages of products.

Even if you don’t plan on putting products online, you may still want to use other applications that require a platform language such as PHP.  Forums, anti-spam contact forms, or even a blog require something like PHP web hosting.