If you plan to do any business online, make sure you get a bare minimum of at least 1 GB (gigabyte) of data transfer per month.

Email "Aliases"

Most web hosts allow you to set up email addresses connected with your domain, such as jim@thenetreporter.com, and have them forward to your email account, like yourname@aol.com. The ability to set up email aliases forms an integral part of any online business. Make sure your hosting company allows you to set up at least 5 email aliases.

Website Tools

If you want to do anything more than let people look at static web pages, you will need to have certain tools available. The two most important tools are CGI and website statistics. These allow you to run scripts and see who came to your site and when.

Tech Support

Make sure you understand any company's technical support policies and hours of operation. Don't wait until Saturday afternoon to discover your only help option is to wait and email them Monday morning.

Go to www.comparewebhosts.com and check out tool for researching and comparing offerings of over 9,000 different website hosting companies. Try "Power Search" feature, which allows you to specify about 50 different variables, including price, company location, bandwidth, and number of email aliases allowed. It even lets you search by how often hosting company backs up its servers to protect against data loss.

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Shared hosting usually comes with a heap of extras and most are included in price. You can get email, auto-oresponders, pre-installed scripts including counters and mail scripts, password protected directories, your own cgi-bin, browser based control panels, secure directories and more. Check options to see that you are getting what you need.

However, if you need complete control of your server, you need a dedicated server. Obviously if you're not going to share server with anyone, it is going to be more expensive.

Dedicated servers are usually only required by experienced developers. If you're not sure if you need a dedicated server, then you probably only need shared hosting. If you're in doubt, contact company you are considering hosting with and ask them about their products in detail.