Factors while deciding a Hosting company

[AjiNIMC]

What are the factors while deciding a Hosting company? I want to compare few hosting companies, so what according to you are the imp attributes?

How will it affect SE rankings?

Thanks,
AjiNIMC

[chandrika]

If you want to target a specific country , say for example you had a .co.uk domain, then hosting the website in the same country also helps it is said.

Uptime is important so that when the spiders come and crawl the site isnt down and the spiders dont get a load of 404 not founds.99.99% uptime is recommended

Some people say to get a unique ip address because if there are numerous banned web sites being hosted from your server or from the same IP address that your site resides on it might have a knock on bad effect. But that is controversial.

I always test the support as well by just writing to them seeing how quick they respond.

[dburdon]

Aji,

most hosting companies overclaim. Speak to people with experience.

[technica]

I host with ipowerweb... http://www.ipowerweb.com
They are affordable and reliable. 24 hr phone support as well, I call them if I ever have a problem, which is rare.
Highly recommended.