If you are seeking a new hosting company let me give you some words of wisdom because I have been through a few. One company even went belly up in the middle of the night giving me no notice. That was disastrous for me as well as my customers. If you are tired of hosting companies with poor service and excessive downtime then get ready to print this page out.

First thing first, you might take a step back from your website or E-business and think about what you want it to look like in the future. Then start making decisions about the hosting. Think about things like: How much traffic are you expecting? How many more sites will you build or could possibly build in the future? Are you going to load software to the server? Some of the best programs that smart marketers use need to be loaded: such as; affiliate programs and autoresponders and require a dedicated IP address. If you intend on growing then make sure these things are an option.

If you realized that you will want to have more sites in the future or currently are moving a lot of sites from one account to another. One thing you can do is get a dedicated server or keep your money in your pocket and find a hosting company that'll allow you to have add-on domains. Did you realize that you could have one account for around $25 a month and all your domains on it? You, for the cost of $25 a month could host 2, 10, 15, 26, 45 domains. There ar e accounts out there that will let you do this. But here's what you should know about these types of accounts, you are not limited in domains, but limited in the amount of space you have. So if you need more space, just ask and they'll be happy to give it to you for a price.

If you want to market your website you should get your own IP address with your accounts. This will play a big part when it comes to search engines finding you, as well as increasing the utilization of your autoresponders.

One big thing to watch out for:

Make sure that you find out what type of control panel the hosting company is using. If they don't tell you I would be scared. I believe that the best hosting companies out there will use cPanel. If the hosting company is using cPanel then they will probably be bragging about it since it is designed very well.

Now here's a quick checklist:

• Step back and think about what you want
• Check to see if they allow you to have add-on domains. If so, then what will it cost in additional fees? (Some companies have a one time fee for this).
• Make sure you own your own IP address, not a shared IP. Most companies call this a dedicated IP address.
• Look at the control panel, is it cPanel?