If you have registered your own domain name and now you are finding a web hosting service .

So from where should you start? What type of hosting you want? Which hosting service is better for you? what will it cost?..... these are the questions that may be coming in your mind but before getting any hosting service you should consider certain factors.

If you want to host your site for free then you will have to let them display ads on your page. Yes this way do save your money but free hostings lack a lot of features which u will be wanting on your website. free web hostings are generaly used for personal home pages and it works fine but if you are hosting your bussiness website then you will not like to place other's ads on your page.

Most hosting companies provide a range of services, starting with low-cost packages and moving up to more advanced, expensive features. Obviously, when you pick a hosting plan, you need to make sure it provides enough disk space for your site at a price within your budget. But what else should you watch for? At the very least, consider the following points.

Your Website Weight

weight of your website depends on how many pages, type of pages and number of images used. if your website contains a lot of images then obviously you will need more space and more bandwidth.

Usage and Bandwidth Limitations

Most hosting plans limit how much data you can transfer to and from the servers in a month. It's also called bandwidth. Once you reach 1GB or 2GB of data transfer, most companies charge you by the megabyte for any additional traffic.

How many bandwidth, or monthly transfer, do you need? That depends. Even fairly busy sites that average more than a hundred visitors a day transfer less than 1GB a month. However, if you provide a three-minute MP3 file or a short video clip for visitors to download, your site will soon break the bandwidth barrier.

If you have some idea of your anticipated traffic, pick a plan accordingly.

For small information sites, 50MB storage space with 200mb bandwidth should be ok. If your site applies multimedia technologies such as video, audio, mp3, flash, you have to plan something much bigger and find a bandwidth in GB

Always remember there's no such thing as "unlimited" bandwidth. If someone claims to offer "unlimited" bandwidth or transfer, he's simply lying. so Be careful.

Extra Features

If your web site uses or will soon use SQL databases, CGI scripts, FrontPage extensions, SSI (Server Side Includes), ASP, PHP... you'll need a hosting plan that supports these extras. These sorts of higher-end development tools may or may not come standard.

At the very least, make sure you have your own cgi-bin capabilities. because you will be using it.

Some hosting companies offer you more extra features such as mailing list management programs, autoresponders, search engine submission, sub domains, which will be very handy when  you need it.

File Transfer Options

You'll need to upload your site from your local machine to the server it lives on, look for a hosting that allows FTP uploads to get your site online. Using FrontPage or a web interface for uploading files is another good option if the hosting service provide this support..

If you intend to broadcast streaming media from your site, say Realplayer videos, make sure that your hosting plan will allow for it. Some hosting companies charge a small extra fee for streaming media while some don't support it at all.

Mail Options

How much email accounts will you need for your domain? Estimate the number of mailboxes you want. You might pick one for each employee, if you have any. If you are running a one man show like me, you should add some for functions such as sales, info, support, feedback, besides the most important one, webmaster. and using such emails give a positive imapct on your customer.

Some of the hosting providers offers email forwarding options in there plan which is quite usefull. managing more than one emai addresses is a bit difficult and task so you will find email forwarding a helpfull tool for you.

Your budget

The most important factor is your budget. I have seen that most of the big fishes discourage low cost or cheep web hosting service quoting that you will be slaped by there servicess and support but thats not true, you can choose a low cost plan and it works fine.