A great choice, and I never really made the distinction between 'express',
and the corporate edtiion. The express edition now about as good as the full
paid version was some years ago.

Most ISPs often charge a little bit more to host SQL server. It's not the
fact that the database engine is free as much as it's simply that you're
using extra processing bandwidth, memory and resources of the server. I
don't think it really ever was they will not charge to use sql server
express vs that of the corporate edition.

If you're not hosting your own web site with your own server that you've
purchased (which would mean that you can put anything you want on the
server), then you don't have much choice. The cost of having SQL server per
month by some ISP's is so dirt cheap as to not really change the cost of
your monthly bill from that provider anyway.

I do know that some ISPs did say they don't want to use SQL server express
because it does not scale well in their server farms (supposedly uses too
much CPU, and this may actually be true, because you're not going to use of
sql express in a server firm to service 200 companies each with 20
employees). Thus, the ISP can't hang fifteen to twenty customers off of one
box if you're purchasing a virtual server from them and using express. A
virtual server means that have your own copy of windows, and can install +
run just about anything you want on that box. However if you start
installing things that gobbles up too much processing time, they're not
gonna be happy with you. on the other hand which edition of Internet
services are you planning to use now anyway? (are you actually choosing the
type of server, and software you going to run on the server at this point
time, or simply leaving the choice up your ISP).

In place of purchasing a virtual server, you can also purchase a hosted box.
Thus you can add additional hard drives, install more memory, and install
any piece of software you want on that server. You won't incur additional
charges because you're actually paying for the whole box, it's just not on
location at your business anymore. (and they often provide a dialup phone
line for when the internet is down so you can dial up into the server to do
things like reboot the server, and do offline maintenance).

It's not clear if you're going to purchase and set up a server at your
business location, and simply hook it up to the Internet. Again, in this
scenario you can install and run any piece of software you want without
additioal charges.

The advantages of having your own complete hosted box is you can do whatever
you want to that box, and often when you add additional things like more
memory or additional disk space you can do so without incurring a monthly
additional charges. On the other hand, this also means you'd better have
somebody who has experience running and setting up a server and Internet
services.

A virtual hosted server is a little bit cheaper, because in that case you
still have a full computer and operating system (you can log into), but
you're sharing your hardware and memory with other people.

And of course the most common is simply that you get a hosted web site and
some database space, and how that shared is not exactly clear in my mind,
but you are sharing that resources with other people, and this is usually
the cheapest monthly solution you will purchase from a provider (and for
people that simply purchase a cheap monthly website space, this is what most
of them use).

You should contact your current ISP as to what kind of services they offer,
or perhaps find someone who can help you work through these issues and
ideas. This MS access group is certainly not the right place, and
unfortantly ms-access don't have much to do with the web...