Looking at different small business web hosting options you will quickly find that just like home computers, servers need an operating system to work and furthermore that there are several different systems available.

The two main options are Unix/Linux systems or Windows systems and in contrast to home computers I would suggest you stay away from Windows operating systems on your web hosting account.

There are a number of reasons for this but I feel the biggest one is that 99% of the powerful, function-rich, time-saving scripts out there - such as discussion forums, classified ads, auction scripts, link directories and more are all designed to work with Unix systems rather than Windows.

So you see that while using anything other than Windows on your home computer seriously limits the range of software you can run (and so essentially handicaps your potential business results) the reverse is true of small business web hosting accounts and servers.

Choose a Unix web hosting account and the sky is the limit. Choose Windows and you’re in for a real struggle in my opinion. And nobody wants that if they can avoid it.