Look at the history of the company and try to find reliable reviews online. A good place to look for hosting companies is www.webhostingtalk.com. Other way around is to check for the testimonials in their website and see if those people in testimonials actually exist. If the website looks like a ready template it can give a hint that the provider is quite new in the business or a reseller.
While many hosts take backups I would always recommend to take your own backups as well. You can simply never have too many backups. In my company we backup our shared hosting servers every six hours and still recommend customers to have their own backups.
In most cases you will get what you pay for - don't expect high levels of redundancy for $3 per month. If they say something is unlimited, well, check the Terms of Service. Most of the time there is a limit, one way or the other.
If your site is likely to grow quickly and you don't like swapping providers, look for someone who can provide a good level of service with your current budget and also offers an easy way to upgrade. What we have done is that we run cPanel on shared hosting servers, virtual servers and dedicated servers and provide easy upgrades and downgrades between all these three options.
Slashdot Mirror
Look at the history of the company and try to find reliable reviews online. A good place to look for hosting companies is www.webhostingtalk.com. Other way around is to check for the testimonials in their website and see if those people in testimonials actually exist. If the website looks like a ready template it can give a hint that the provider is quite new in the business or a reseller.
While many hosts take backups I would always recommend to take your own backups as well. You can simply never have too many backups. In my company we backup our shared hosting servers every six hours and still recommend customers to have their own backups.
In most cases you will get what you pay for - don't expect high levels of redundancy for $3 per month. If they say something is unlimited, well, check the Terms of Service. Most of the time there is a limit, one way or the other.
If your site is likely to grow quickly and you don't like swapping providers, look for someone who can provide a good level of service with your current budget and also offers an easy way to upgrade. What we have done is that we run cPanel on shared hosting servers, virtual servers and dedicated servers and provide easy upgrades and downgrades between all these three options.
Good luck in your search of a new provider!
Mikko Kivinen
Scene Group
www.scenegroup.net