A SOAP Server is a server that hosts web services and acts as a provider of services. It will typically provide some kind of listening / speaking device (HTTP, SMTP) and be able to parse SOAP messages. The server may also have facilities for dishing the SOAP request off to another device, usually an application server. Some SOAP servers will also support object serialization schemes other than the prescribed SOAP scheme, such as XML-RPC.

SOAP Servers also will have varying levels of support for SOAP as well as WSDL. Most SOAP Servers now aim to be compliant with the WS-Basic Profile.

The SOAP Server is the primary participant in a Service Network. The Apache AXIS product is an example of a SOAP Server.