• Advertising. In case you get free hosting, you will have to have the advertisement of your supplier on your site. This is why free hosting is a bad idea for a business site, except on those rare cases where your product and the product you advertise complement each other.

• Web Space. Consider what your needs are and what they will be in the future. If you plan to have mostly text and a few pics, you won’t need much. But if you want videos, flash objects, high definition images, interactivity, etc., you’re going to need much more than that, specially if you offer several products and want to have several pics of each one.

• FTP availability. Unless you are planning to use a very trivial webpage, you should definitely get a hosting that allows FTP so that you can upload your own pages.

• Types and Sizes of Files. While most types of files will be accepted by most hostings, but some of them might not. Also, there might be a limit on the number or size of files that you can upload. If you plan on having not so common or heavy files, like videos and audio files, you should check that the hosting can handle them first.

• Reliability. Check reviews about your hosting about how reliable it is. A hosting that goes down means clients taking their money elsewhere. You want them to stay with you and give your money to you.

• Speed. This is specially important if you want to have many products, videos, music, special efects, and interactivity. A site that takes too long is asking customers to go away. Remember that your potential clients might not be using the best computer or the best Internet connection when they visit your site.

Bandwidth. Stay clear from promises of “unlimited bandwidth.” They are just not true because bandwidth costs money. Instead, look for suppliers that specify exactly how much bandwidth you are getting and for how much, and what happens if you exceed it.