To test quality and responsiveness of support personnel, e-mail them some pre-sales questions. Is response fact enough for you? Imagine that your web site is down and your company is just attending a congress… many clicks are expected, but is your web site online to get them? Is response you are getting from support team thorough or is it merely scratching surface? Is response easy to understand for you?

A provider concerned about quality of his support, would make available as many as possible ways to communicate with its clients. So find out as much as you can about its online support staff, help desk, message boards etc.

Information on reputation of a web-hosting provider is something you might find on forums or discussion boards. Any disgruntled customers there? Would you like to be one?

Reliability is another aspect of problem. Ask for uptime of company’s web servers. Some hosts offer an uptime guarantee, usually 99.9% (100% is not a realistic figure in computer world). The guarantee means that if your web site is not available 99.9% of time, you will be refunded money for that month or you will receive free web hosting for a month as compensation for your web site being unavailable.

Price

Well, true it’s paid web hosting and this means you have to pay for it. My advice would be don’t try too hard to find cheapest possible web host. You will probably end-up wasting an incredible amount of time and is very likely that within two weeks after you have bought it, you will stumble upon a better deal. Apart from irony of it and loss of time, cheaper is not always better.

The other extreme, paying big money to get what you could have gotten for less is equally bad. At $50 for 200 MB of space with 2 GB of bandwidth you are definitely getting robbed, but same service for $5 or $10 is a good deal.

The thin line between a profitable and, why not, enjoyable web presence and a nightmare with slow server response, unreachable support and irritating server downtime is drawn by you. By you choosing web-hosting provider.

Choose carefully: there can be only a few that will live up to their promises and deliver for you good quality web hosting!

Calin Indre is editor at HostPinPin (www.hostpinpin.com), a Cheap Web Hosting Directory Resource.

HostPinPin.com is a resource for webmasters and consumers looking to find a web hosting company. Providing web hosting reviews, articles, tips.

This varies widely between web hosting companies. Now that I have used Cpanel I wouldn't want to be without it, mainly because I am used to it and now know what features it has and how to use most of them. It's a lot easier to stick with something you know than have to try switching to a new User Interface.

Are you designing your site with Frontpage?. If so, check your host supports this, as not all do.

Another area you may want to research is supplied statistics. What sort of web statistics software is included with your web hosting account? Is, for example, Awstats included?

4. Fees.

I'd rather pay a little more for a full feature set and reliabilty than get cheapest deal and have problems with server downtime, bandwith issues, etc. With hosting deals you usually get a level of service that is relative to price you have paid.

Check that your prospective hosting company offers a refund service before signing up. Most quality ones do as they know they can deliver what they promise.