A personal web server, or personal server in short, allows users to store, selectively share, or publish information on the web or on a home network. Unlike other types of web servers, a personal web server is owned or controlled by an individual, and operated for the individual's needs, instead of by a company. It can be implemented in different ways:

• as an appliance
• as a general-purpose server, such as a Linux server, which may be located at the owner's home or in a data center
• in a shared hosting model, where several users share one physical server by means of virtualization, or virtual hosting.
• as one feature of a computer that is otherwise also used for other purposes.

Microsoft Personal Web Server (PWS) is a scaled-down web server software for Windows operating systems. It has fewer features than Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) and its functions have been superseded by IIS and Visual Studio. Microsoft officially supports PWS on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 98 SE, and Windows NT 4.0. Prior to the release of Windows 2000, PWS was available as a free download as well as included on the Windows distribution CDs. PWS 4.0 was the last version and it can be found on the Windows 98 CD and the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack.