If you acquire hosting, you rent space for your website, plus extras.When renting space for your real-life business or your home apartment, you might be paying for square feet of space, plus heat, electricity, water, perhaps landscaping and even security services.

Online, it’s kinda the same.
Your hosting fee gets you space on the server, plus connection to the internet. It may also get you script-running capabilities, maybe shopping cart software, mailing list software, and other extras.

As with real-life renting, what you get depends on what you pay, and also what deals you can sniff out.