Storage: You need to know if your professional web hosting offers enough disk space. If you plan to host a small sized website with few graphics and html coding, 500 to 1000 MB of disk space might be quite sufficient. For website with more graphics and features, you need to find a professional web hosting that offers several gigabytes of storage. Bandwidth: Bandwidth determines the amount of data transfer you are allowed per month by your professional web hosting. This would be determined by the level of traffic that you are expecting to attract to your website. Bandwidth of 1GB can support 3000 unique visitors. Pop email: If you are running a web business, you would need pop3 email facilities from your professional web hosting. This means that you can have an email address of your own domain. Free or paid: Should you pay for your professional web hosting or choose a free one? If you use a paid professional web hosting service, you would have full control over the content of your website with no third party advertising. This would also create a more professional and reliable image of your web business. CGI, MySQL, PHP, ASP: If you want to run interactive scripts (counters, form-to-mail, guest books) on your website you will need a CGI-BIN in your professional web hosting server. If you want your website to have a data base (mailing list, message boards) you would need php and MySQL facilities. ASP is also a data base related format that works with Windows servers. Support: It is essential for a professional web hosting to give 24 hours customer support and address any problems of the customer immediately. You can check out the level of their support by emailing the professional web hosting service before you setup an account with them. They should respond within 24 hours and answer all your questions in a satisfactory manner. Cost: You can expect to pay anywhere from $7.75 to $20 for professional web hosting services. If you are lucky, you can find a professional web hosting company who will fulfill all your requirements at a reasonable price that suits your budget. Uptime: Your professional web hosting company should guarantee 99% uptime for your website. You can determine this by contacting some of the professional web hosting company’s current customers. Some professional web hosting services have a list of their customers on their website. If a list is not available, you can contact them and ask for testimonials from current customers about their level of service. Try to choose your professional web hosting carefully, as having a reliable and efficient web host would help immensely in the success of your web business. Control Panel: Different professional web hosting companies tend to use different control panels. Although they might look and feel different, they usually accomplish the same type of tasks. Some popular control panels used by professional web hosting services are Sphera, CPanel, Plesk, Ensim's WEBppliance, and Zervex DSM. | 
