If you need web hosting for php then your online business must be moving forward, congratulations!
HTML only supported web hosting is fine if your either a beginner or there is no reason for you to use php scripting in your desired web site.
Web hosting for php dramatically increases the versatility of your web site. You go from basic web design and move up to adding various professional extras to your site.
For example when I first started out in the online business all was well until I learned more about what I could actually do. Adding a refer a friend part to one of ny first websites was a major headache. It took me a lot of valuable time to figure out why it would not work.
Only then did I realise that my hosting package I was on did not support PHP. So an upgrade was needed. It was very simple to do this. Just a case of paying a little more for my hosting plan!
Once this was set up I wa free to carry on with the plans I had for increasing the amount of things I could do on my site.
A membership site was something I was looking into and I needed web hosting for php to do this. As I stated before adding a refer a friend script also required me to have web hosting for php.
You see if you are moving in the right direction with your online business then its an absolute must for you to obtain web hosting for php.. But do not just opt for any web hosting for php. You must look into WHICH php version you require and what the latest supported php is available.
Its no good using software which uses php 4 when your web hosting for php is running on a php 5