The vast majority of small online businesses cannot afford to host their websites on their own because the setup costs for software development, server hardware, bandwidth capacity and other types of expenses associated with maintenance are way beyond their means.
Everyone makes mistakes and web hosting companies are no exception to this. Web hosting is an industry where the services offered depend on so many things that can so easily go wrong.
Anyone can make their own presence online. You can write a blog or simply join the social networking sites using your computer or while using a terminal in an internet cafe. But, if you want to have your own site or web page - one that is entirely your own and not just a page on Yahoo or Blogger - then you will need what is called a web host.