I have a vague memory that back in the day you could test IWP and/or WebDirect locally without needing server or a hosting environment. Can you do this now or do you need both server and a hosting account and I'm just playing around with it to see if it will work for my purposes?

Yes you will need a server.  But you can get one for free (max 3 user connection) with the FileMaker Developer Subscription.  That's very cheap.

You can also get one for free for 15 days through the FM Cloud trial.

You don't need both a server AND a hosting account.  You can do your own hosting if you want.  Or use AWS (not FM Cloud AWS) and install the full FMS on that.

Ah ha, that's how I did it back then as I did have a FD Subscription and server. Thanks for the great answer Wim! I didn't know you could host FM Server on AWS apart from cloud but then again, I've always found AWS overly complicated. I'll start searching Google for more info on AWS and FM but if anyone knows of some great articles please post as I'm sure others would benefit as well.

Thanks again Wim!

Here's one to start: http://www.soliantconsulting.com/blog/2016/07/filemaker-hosting-and-amazon-web-services