Web Hosting Components :
When you buy a Web server space then you should be clear about the follows.
Disc Space: A small or medium web site will need between 10 and 100MB of disk space. If you plan to keep lot of audio and Video on your web site then you need plan to buy more space. Before buying server space you should check the options available to expand your disc space if you need it in future.
Monthly Traffic: A small or medium web site will need between 1GB and 10GB of data transfer on monthly basis. If you plan to keep lot of audio and Video on your web site then you need plan to look for more data transfer capacity. Check different options based on your requirements. What are other options available in case you cross the given data transfer limit. Your site should not be stopped in case you reach to the given limit.
Processing Speed: If you are buying space on a shared machine then you can not guess how much speed will be given to you. In that case only way is to see other hosted sites with the same service provider to know about their hosting quality. But if you are buying virtual dedicated server or dedicated server then you should consider how much RAM is being allocated to you. Your pricing will depend on the given processing power to you.
Connection Speed: Now a days very fast connection speed is available from most of the service providers. So choose a service provider who is giving better connection speed in terms of bits per second. You can have connection speed ranging from 64Kb per second to 2.488Gb per second.
Email Accounts: Make sure you are going to get sufficient number of e-mail accounts. There are many other options available which come along with your e-mail account. Like, will you get IMAP, POP and E-mail Forwarding options available along with your e-mail facilities.
Emailing Support: Apart form having email accounts it is also very important that your web server should have a facility to send emails from back-end. In case your site visitors want to contact to you using a form provided by you then you will be able to use that emailing facility to send email to your designated account. In simple terms you should make sure that SMTP Server is setup and working on your Web server.
Latest Technologies: You should make sure that your web server is equipped with all the latest technologies. It should have latest version support for PHP, PERL, ASP,ASP.Net and JAVA,Wordpress, joomla, drupal, ecommerce or shopping cart, etc.
Databases: There are many databases available MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server,Ms access etc. So you should choose your server based on your database requirement. If you are buying space on a shared server then you need to verify how much space will be allocated for your database. Many ISP does not give more than a limited space for databases. So if your site needs lot of database size then you should go for virtual dedicated server.
Server Uptime: This is very important to buy a web server from a reliable and reputed ISP. You should make sure your ISP is giving you 99.99% server uptime. If there is server down then there are many service providers who gives you compensation in case your sites goes down more than a limited time.
Backups & FTP: Make sure your Service Provider is giving you or more ways of taking regular backup of your web site. If your site is changing everyday then it becomes very important that you should take regular backup of your web site. Many service providers do it on your behalf but they charge very little cost for this service.
Hosting Control Panel: Just make sure what type of facilities you will get to maintain your hosting account. If your service provider is providing your an easy to use control panel or some other similar tool. Using a control panel you should be able to maintain basic operations related to your web site specially like log your service request, your reboot request or any other problem.
Customer Support: Before finalizing a deal with your service provider you should make sure they will provide your required support. You can get this information using Internet forums or from your friends. There are many service providers who give you 24×7 support for any technical or non technical problem.