Choosing a good web hosting company is like forming an important partnership. A good web hosting company will appreciate you as a customer and work hard to make sure you are happy with their service.

At the same time your website is an important part of your business, and you will come to rely on your web host to make sure your site is always available and operating at peak performance.

* When you choose a web hosting company - first and foremost they should be a stable business that has been around for a while and you can feel comfortable they are not going anywhere. We have seen too many clients scrambling to transfer their sites to another hosting company after the host they were using went out of business. (Often the host doesn't bother to inform its clients that it is going out of business - the client suddenly realizes their site has gone down and they can no longer contact the company.) If your domain name isn't properly registered or you don't have a recent copy of your site on disk - extricating

yourself from a failed hosting company can be a very difficult proposition.

* Second, and equally important, it should be easy to contact your hosting company. Remember, at some point in the future - no matter how good your host is - you'll probably have a reason to want to contact them. Whether the reason is setting up a new e-mail address, modifying a technical setting, or some other reason a responsive host can save you a lot of time. W aiting on hold through 45 minutes of automated phone messages is not an efficient use of your time. Find a host who you can talk to - on the phone or face to face.