The purpose of web servers is to store files belonging to a website and broadcasting them further online to your audiences. Web hosting is simply the service offered by hosting providers where they lease web server resources to other users.
One of the oldest and one of the most popular web servers is the Apache server. Up until recently, this was the most popular web server however it has been surpassed by one other, its most fierce competitors. According to w3techs.com Apache powers around 33.4% of all websites while Nginx powers 34%, however, the real difference can be seen with some of the largest and most popular websites out there. This is where Apache often fails.
Approximately 18 years ago, in 2003, a web server called LiteSpeed was released. About 4 years later in 2007, it was configured to what we know it now, a more efficient Apache replacement.