>> If you are a beginner, just calculate your present requirement keeping in mind of any future up gradations. It is essential if in future you go for an interactive site or a dynamic site, your present host must have ability to upgrade services without any hassles. You should choose a basic package and check required features available for use. You can always upgrade to higher package in future. This way you can save much of your money and focus on enhancing your site.

>> If your site is a database driven and require custom or readymade script installations, You should check if components required by site are preinstalled on server. You can make a checklist and ask your hosting provider if they will be complying with all requirements. Some companies also provide hosting with preinstalled scripts/software’s which you can install and start using in minutes without spending much time on developing and installing it. It is always advisable to check complete features of software’s, which meets your present requirements as well as have latest version installed. You may choose an advance hosting plan and check required features.

>> If your site is a high traffic one and required concurrent up gradations and installations of scripts, you should go for a dedicated hosting service. It is always advisable to have a managed dedicated server with all latest components installed with it. This will give you freedom to upgrade your site or application at any point of time, done by you only. Find out reliable datacenters and checkout server specs along with facilities provided by them. There are few datacenters which I can recommend are Rackspace, ThePlannet, Infinology and also you can check with EV1Servers too for some interesting offers.

Website response times

Be sure to ask hosting provider for a list of websites that are hosted on their servers. Enter a few of them into your browser and pay attention to how fast they come up. If all of them take a long time to load, this may indicate that hosting provider's servers are overloaded. Doing a ping on website addresses is another way to measure time it takes for server to respond. Keep in mind though, that a ping test will be more of a measure of a bandwidth bottleneck than a server problem.

Web Hosting bandwidth: How much do you get?

How much bandwidth does web hosting service provide you with every month? If it is only 500mb per month and your website is 50 kilobytes in size, this will only allow 10,000 visitors per month to hit your website. If you expect to need more, make sure you can live with extra charges hosting provider will levy. If you website traffic explodes, you may be on hook for large bandwidth overage charges.

Small business web hosting that is reliable is a vital part of any success your company will experience online. Doing your homework ahead of time will save you lots of grief later on.