General rule of thumb is not to sign up for yearly web hosting plans. Instead, get monthly plan where you can unsubscribe from on the second month when you are not happy with the service. That is, if you ended up with an unreliable web hosting company in the first place.

Here is a simple guide that can be easily applied to typical web sites:

--Web Space--

Expect a small website to take up 10 and 100 MB. Considering that you may want to expand your website in the near future, it is advisable to get a web hosting plan with ample web space.

Make sure that you know your needs before you start looking for your web host. Not every web hosting plan can be upgraded or customised. More than often, webmasters do not get the features they need and are not able to customise their web hosting features.

--Monthly Traffic--

Data transfer per month are typically referred to as bandwidth. It is the amount of data transfer that occurs between your website and visitors. A small or medium web site will consume between 1 and 5GB of data transfer per month. Larger, commercial or popular websites often consume more than 5GB of monthly data transfer and sometimes, exceeding 100GB of monthly data transfer.

Before you decide on a web hosting plan, be sure to check this:

- What is the monthly data transfer/ bandwidth allowed?

- Will you be charged if your website exceeds its limit?

- Are you able to upgrade/add on your bandwidth?

--Connection Speed--

Visitors to your web site will often connect via 56K modems or ADSL modems but your web host provider should have a much faster connection. Your website should have high web site connections that are approximately 1000 high speed (56 Kilobytes per second) modems combined- T3 fiber optic connections.

In the early days of the Internet, T1- connections was considered a fast connection. The fastest connections available are T3 connections that are used by Internet Service Providers and major corps.