For tracking Web site traffice, 23dimensions provides every Web Hosting account with a free install of AWStats.
No, you don't need a counter. (See How do I view how many people have visited my site?) In fact, a hit counter can be misleading, becuase a hit counter tells you how many times a page has loaded, which is different than (and much higher) than the number of people who have actually visited the page. Why? Most visitors see the same page more than once, just by browsing the site. Also, a hit counter would include all the times you've viewed the page. In addition to the hit counter problems per page, a hit counter doesn't tell you about site visitors. A hit counter is per page. To get any good information from a hit counter about your Web site traffic, you would have to add up all the hit counters of all the pages, then figure out which "hits" across pages were by the same visitor and then subtract the duplicate hits.
Isn't there a better way? Yes! Here at 23dimensions we have an industry standard application called AWStats, which tells you the number of hits to your site, across all pages, as well as per page and, the important one, the number of unique visitors to your site. You can use Web/FTP Stats by logging into your site's cPanel.
"Hosting" is an account that puts the Web site's files online so the Web site is available at an internet address, eg, mysite.com or whatever your address will be. An analogy I like to use is the telephone. A Web site is to a telephone what a hosting account is to a telephone account. You need an account with the phone company for people to call you on your telephone. You need a hosting account for people to reach your Web site. It's where your Web site lives. Your account is a place to copy the Web site files, so they show up on the Internet.
First, of course, you must have an email account setup and know your username and password. Then you can login to your webmail account online.