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.

3. Technical Support As most hosting companies offer inclusive technical support, you shouldn't pay extra for this. If you're not offered 24 hours/7 days you should look elsewhere. The test is to contact company and ask questions. If they don't reply within 48 hours, or don't reply at all, consider another hosting company. A good company should reply within 24-48 hours.

4. Reliability. How reliable is a web hosting company? Most claim 99.9% uptime, but due to nature of computers and communications equipment, outages will and do occur occasionally. You can contact a company and ask, but they will tell you they're very reliable. Instead, ask for a couple of sites they currently host, that you can check out for yourself. Not only will you see that site is available, it gives you opportunity to see how well they perform during peak periods too.

5. Price and Guarantee. If previous four steps check out, then you need to consider price and this can vary widely. You need to consider setup fees, monthly fees, plan discounts and optional extras in your calculations. Some companies offer you ridiculously low or no monthly fees, but check fine print before agreeing to anything. Free sites almost always have popups or require space invasive banners. Cheap hosting companies often fail on steps 3 and 4, so check them out first, or you may find your site is often not available to your visitors. Setup costs vary widely too. Basically, this is cost that a company will charge to set up an account for you. This is justified if you are getting a lot of features included (see step 2). You should not need to pay over $50. If you can get a money back guarantee, then you know company is concerned about it's customers. The longer guarantee, better. Seven days is not usually enough to judge if company is suited to you.

So, if you follow steps listed above, you should find perfect hosting company for your needs. **********************************************************