1. Reviews of Company
This is one of the biggest considerations you must take when buying from a hosting company. If reviews are good, fine move onto the next steps, but if they are bad stay far away! Remember you are entrusting them with you data and money. Make sure it is well spent and is not wasted.

2. Features of the Package
Make sure it has the features YOU need. A large amount of Bandwidth and Storage Space may be pointless if it doesn’t have MYSQL databases, or another Vital Feature you need to run your site. On the complete opposite side of the scale, don’t buy a package because of features you wouldn’t use! It’s pointless!!!

3. Dedicated, Shared or VPS
The choice is yours. Some hosts may try and talk you into getting a Dedicated server which you may not need. They cost a lot more and would be completely unnecessary to someone with a small website which is not completely Vital. My advice would be to go with shared until you feel it would be a travesty for your site you go down. Then go with Dedicated.

4. Read the Small Print
However long and boring the terms of service are they are important! Failure to read them could result in your account being terminated for breaching them. Make sure they do not ban things which are important to your site. E.g. File Banks, e-commerce, etc.

5. Call Them Up
Before you buy call them up and talk to them! If they give you direct, information rich responses they know what they are talking about and are likely to be trustworthy. Companies who’s employees know nothing about their servers and packages are likely to offer poor technical support in the future.

Matthew