ASP is a server side scripting language originally released by Microsoft. Most ASP hosting plans will be hosted on a Windows platform server. Because of that - ASP hosting plans will often cost more than their open source counter parts like PHP hosting plans because of the cost of non-open-source server platforms.

ColdFusion Markup Language (CFM) is a scripting language processed on the server - similar to PHP, ASP, and CGI based coding. Cold Fusion hosting is less common than PHP or ASP because there are very high licensing costs that are incurred by the hosting company in supporting ColdFusion. These costs are reflected in the higher price of CFM supported hosting plans.

Dedicated Hosting refers to web hosting where the contract holder purchases the rights to be the only organization whose domains are hosted from a single web server. Dedicated hosting plans are usually more expensive than shared hosting plans or VPS hosting plans.

MySQL is an open source database platform. MySQL is extremely stable and widely used. Because it is open source, MySQL is a cheap database hosting option for any web-hosting company. By using MySQL, a web host is able to keep costs down, leaving you to compare cheap MySQL hosting plan options.

PHP is currently one of the most widely used server side website programming language. Often PHP and MySQL (database) are bundled together - because both are open source, and very low cost options for a hosting company to support.

Shared hosting refers to web hosting where multiple user accounts reside on one web server. It is called "shared hosting" because the users are "sharing" the resources on that server. Because of the fact that one user with poor coding or resource intensive processes can hog resources - most shared hosting plans come with a stipulation that the user can not do anything that exceeds "normal" hosting requirements.

Since most sites start out with low traffic and low resource utilization - most sites can be initially hosted using a shared hosting plan. Gaming sites, movie download sites, and other sites with potentially heavy transfer and/or space requirements most likely will face issues with shared hosting plans because by nature they exceed "average" resource use.

Space, also called "storage," refers to the amount of data that a web hosting plan will allow you to store. A site that is more text base and database driven (like HostSearchSite.com) uses relatively little storage space. This site uses less than 30 MB of storage for everything. As you compare hosting plans, keep in mind that the type of site you are hosting will determine how much space you need.

Transfer, or "Bandwidth" as its sometimes called, refers to the amount of data a hosting plan will allow to be uploaded or downloaded. If you upload a 2 MB picture to your website and it is viewed 999 times, the transfer amount used would be: (2MB x 1 upload) + (2MB x 999 downloads) = 2MB upload + 1,998MB download = 2,000MB total transfer or 2GB total transfer.

Virtual private server (VPS) hosting plans are plans designed to fill the gap between shared hosting plans and dedicated hosting plans. With shared hosting plans - your site is hosted from the same server has potentially HUNDREDS of other sites. With a VPS hosting plan - your site is hosted from a server that is dedicated to serving a limited number of sites (often dozens or less).