This is a very important step you need to take carefully from the start or you could pay for it in the long run. While you don't want to overpay for bells and whistles you're not going to need, or 'scalability' that you'll probably never grow in to, you don't want to get the cheapest, most basic plan you can find that doesn't allow room for growth either. So how do you shop for a web hosting plan that is a good fit for your business? Here are some web hosting features you should consider when shopping for a plan:

1) Disk/storage space
Unless you have experience designing and building websites it's hard for you to know how much 'room' your website will take up on a server. You may need to seek the advice of a professional if your site has not yet been built and you have no idea what to expect. Web hosting providers will always tell you how much storage space you get on their server with your hosting accounts. Typically, they will offer several different plans with differing amounts of storage. If you've already built your site yourself you can check on the size of the all the files that comprise the site to get an idea of how much space you'll need NOW and whether you'll have enough room to add to your site later as the need arises.

2) Bandwidth or Data Usage Allowance
This is a measure of the expected traffic, or visitor activity your site will generate. Whenever someone visits your site, including you, your friends, colleagues and relatives, pages that are viewed are downloaded from the server during "data transfer". Most people have no idea how many website visitors they will get in the weeks and months after their website is launched. There are no hard and fast rules for estimating this.

If you will be building a brand new website and not spending any time or efforts on marketing and promoting it, except by word of mouth, then you probably won't get very much traffic and visitor activity. Most web hosting plans, even the basic ones, will more than adequately cover you for expected bandwidth for this type of a site.

However, if you expect to be heavily promoting the site through a variety of marketing campaigns, including search engine optimization and promotion, and even online advertising or sponsored positions with major search engines, you can definitely expect a lot of traffic. If you will have a large website (50 pages or more) with a lot of graphics that will be heavily promoted, you need to consider a bandwidth plan that will give you room to grow.

3) Domain Email Management
This is a must-have feature of any good, professional web hosting plan. If you've chosen a domain name then your e-mail addresses will all be configured to use the domain name. For example, if mybusiness.com is your domain name, then all of your e-mail addresses will end in @mybusiness.com. A good web hosting provider will give you access to a browser-based administration tool or control panel, wherein you can create and manage your own e-mail addresses.

If you are a small business it is really helpful to create several e-mail addresses to make you look 'bigger than your are'. For example, you can have This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and have them all set up to come to your Inbox. You may also want to have separate e-mail addresses for each staff member in your office, or roaming sales staff. If you're not sure how many addresses you'll be needing, shop for a web hosting plan that offers you a lot of them, instead of just 2, 5, or 10.

Other e-mail features that are really nice to have are SPAM filtering, forwarding accounts, autoresponders, and web mail (also known as 'roaming mail' - this allows you to read your e-mail using a web browser from any computer).

4) Development tools and add-ons  ->