Choosing a web hosting service can be as tricky as it is important. You want an affordable website host, but you also want one that has the functions and features you need. Here is a checklist to guide you into finding the right web hosting provider for you:

Control panel user-friendliness - can you manage your way around their control panel? Lots of hosts have free tours and demonstrations you can take advantage of to find out if you and your web hosting prospect are a good match.

Site building tools - if you are building your own website, do you want to skip the techie stuff? If so, a number of hosts have site building tools which are greatly useful for this purpose.

But if you will be building your website using any programming language or software program, better choose a host with an FTP transfer. This is what you will use to load your web pages into your host's server.

Ample bandwidth - is the host big enough for you? Check file size, bandwidth, and data space limitations. This isn't one to obsess over in the beginning if you only have a few files to upload, but you have to anticipate how many web pages will need hosting in time as you grow with the host.

Ease of file upload - certain file types are only compatible with some web hosts. Before you even think of subscribing to a certain host, make sure your choice website builder works with it. Contact them if they don't list it in their specifications.

Page security - if you do business transactions online then security is essential, as you want to protect your precious websites and web pages against hackers. Host security is something you can't take for granted.

Server reliability - occasionaly, downtime is inevitable and therefore expected. But this should be a rare ocurrence and you should receive a forewarning whenever their servers will go down. In ideal circumstances, the servers of your web host ought to be up 99% of the time.

Functions and features - take stock of the components your website will be needing - is an autoresponder, email, or shopping cart needed? Will you need to sell ads? Would you want reporting functions and analytics to track website visitor behavior and traffic patterns?

Make sure that your chosen host has all functions and features you need before signing up and transferring our domain.

User reviews - nearing the end of your search, it may do you good to look at what other users have to say as you narrow down your choices and compare prices. User experience can tell you what reputation the company has in the hosting industry.

Also, there are a lot of resellers. You may want to make sure that it is the actual hosting company you are dealing with and not the resellers - you get better customer support and a better price this way.

Price - once you have your final few in in mind that meets all of the above criteria, it is just a matter of picking the one that best suits your budget. Price is the last consideration on our checklist because you don't want to be tempted to hop on the one offering the cheapest fees and compromise on the service and quality.

A lot of good web hosting companies exist out there. It's just a matter of researching a little according to your wants and needs and finding the perfect website host for you will be a breeze.