Many business owners others looking for website hosting are confused by the endless variations that they see with website hosting companies. Looking for a web host can be very time consuming and difficult task so I have detailed the different things that you need to look at when you are looking for a website host.

Here is my list. It’s by no means exhaustive but it will serve the average small business when searching for website hosting.

1. Web space - Most web hosting providers advertise their plans with the size of the hosting space as the main point to differentiate their plans. The amount of space that your website takes up will determine which plan that you choose. Most websites will not need more than 100 m/b of space but if you have some videos or lots of pictures or other information you may need more space. If you check the properties on your website folder on your computer or ask your website designer how big your website is you will find the space that you need. Choose a plan that will allow you to grow a bit so allow an extra 50% of space on what you need.

If you see plans that have unlimited space it usually means that the website host is restricting you in some other way. Although it says unlimited space they are relying on the majority of people not to have many files.

2.Bandwidth – The bandwidth is determined by the amount of traffic that your website does. This can be determined by a combination of how many web site visitors that you have and how many files or what type of files that your website has. Most websites use less than 5 g/b of data per month. If you have lots of video files, lots of pictures or lots of website visitors you will need more bandwidth.

You can start out with a modest bandwidth allocation and upgrade in the future if you want. If you see "unlimited bandwidth" this might mean that the host might be banking on you not using the amount of data that they are promising. In fact these hosts will normally ask you to move your site away if you start to use more data then they expected even though they said it was unlimited.

3.Support – The level of support is really the defining factor when you are choosing a web host. The level of support that your website host affords you is what you should be concentrating on. If you ask a question of your website host they should reply to you within a few hours. Check with your prospective hosts if they offer phone support or if it is only ticket support. If your website host doesn’t offer you the support that you need then it is worth looking for a host that will support you better

4.Uptime – Ask your prospective website hosting company if they have statistics on the server that you will be hosted on. Its no use having a hosting company that makes a claim of certain uptime but cannot support this claim. Your host should be able to show you that their servers will be up at least 99.9% of the time. You shouldn't choose a host that offers 100% uptime as this is not possible with the equipment and systems that hosting requires to run.

5. Cost – Don’t go for the cheapest website host you can find because what you will find is that these hosts will need to compromise on one of the points above. Normally the cheaper host’s don't give you very good support or you will find that your website is down frequently or that your email doesn’t work all the time.

With all this in mind ask your friends for recommendations and choose a short time to start to make sure that you are happy with the host before committing to a longer timeframe.