Choosing the right host is a very important decision. I've compiled a short list of do's and don't when it comes to web hosting.

1) UNLIMITED features : Rarely trust companies that offer unlimited space/bandwidth etc. as this is blatant overselling.

2) Free hosting : Be wary of free hosts, particularly ones that seem to be giving far too good a deal to you - they probably are.

3) Your ACTUAL needs : You might be excited by hosts that offer 5GB of storage space and 1000GB (1TB) of bandwidth for very low prices, but you should at the very least be wary of such companies.

4) Do your research : It's very important to do adequate resource on whichever host you choose: don't just take their word for everything.

5) When your needs outweight most plans : If you've outgrown your current plan and you are using very large resource amounts, it may be time to think about renting out a VPS (Virtual Private Server) or a Dedicated Server.

Excellent tips, thank you very much

Nice article, thanks for sharing

Thanks for such useful tips.

6) Ability to make a backup, and how often the host backs up data

There's a number of hosts that don't make backups for customers, but worse yet, there's a new trend of people not allowing their own customers to make a backup.

I do agree with 4 and 5. It's always best to be an educated buyer.

Another tip just because a host has been in business for 5 years does not mean that they are a stable great host. I have seen alot of hosts going business who have been in busiiness for years

Enough Research and an eye for the right host is the only factor that can avoid any pitfalls in choosing a hosting provider and the package. Asking for reviews about a shortlisted host over public forums can further assure you about the quality of a host.

A long time in business can make it more likely that research will reveal useful information about the quality of the service. A new company is typically a virtual black box, and at best you may find information about the owners/managers.

Great list for those who are looking for a top of the line host!

As for free hosting, I think it's still helpful, especially for web hosting newbie who like to learn about hosting stuff.

Where and how did you take notice of such trend? That's news to me to hear that there are hosting companies (can you give examples) that do not allow customers to make backups?

There is a trend of hosting companies not allowing customers to use their space for backup storage, but I don't know of hosts disallowing creation of backups. Besides, if one has FTP access, there would ultimately be some ways to copy the data.

I think Siteground used to have a policy of not allowing the automatic restoration of backups, probably because they didn't way huge compressed archive files bogging down the server when decompressed. I don't know if this policy is still active. Still, they are not part of a forming trend, as far as I know.

what this means is that yes when you take a hosting plan you will have the facilty to make backups of your sites (no host will stop you doing this), wheat some hosts dont allow is that you take out a plan on their servers just as a backup facility. (lets say you are a reseller with 100 clients) so you decide to offer them a backup service, so you purchase a simple sharded account from a host only so you can ftp the backups to this hosting plan. this is what host will not allow you to do.

I have been running a hosting business since 1999, i run my own VPS which i backup the sites daily and clients have an option to pay a small monthly fee incase they want these backups. these backup are backed up to a separate backup server which is set up just for these.

I also have another VPS which i have configured to offer as a backup server to sell backup space only.

Usually backup option is a part of the hosting services otherwise it costs less and looks not very trustworthy.
That's just my point of view.