When looking for a shared web-hosting provider, it is important to remember that when using shared hosting, you do not have full access to the physical server. By its very nature, you are sharing all the resources of the sever with every other user. What you do will affect everyone else, just as what other users do may also impact you. There are several things you should be looking for when you are ready to start looking for a good shared web hosting provider.
If you are lucky you will find a company that offers free installations and assistance with pre-installable forums, cms or traffic statistics and some even give you a free domain. The web hosts can provide such cheap prices without compromising in service quality by offering what is called Shared Web Hosting.
Some web hosting companies provide dedicated servers to their clients. This means that the entire server will be for your use alone. This is expensive, but it is more stable compared to shared servers. If you're on a tight on the coin you want to spend, you can take advantage of the Shared Web Hosting UK-server arrangement. You just need to know how many accounts are sharing the space, since the speed and the download times of your website will be affected by the performance of other websites from the same server.
Up-time is the over all time the hosting company promises that their servers will be up and running. Some claim to have 100% up-time, but I find that to be almost impossible to have so I tend to go with the ones claiming a 99,9% up-time. This tells us that even though they take back-ups, have mirrored servers and all other stuff to keep the servers safe and running, there is always a small possibility that the servers can go down.
Just because you have used Affordable Web Hosting doesn't mean it has to be poor quality hosting. There are lots of very good quality hosts available at very affordable prices. Also be aware of what comes as standard with your hosting and what comes as paid extras. Check that your potential host uses a popular control panel such as Cpanel. Some hosts use free panels and although they work fine, if the time comes when you have to move your website to a new host, control panels like Cpanel make the process a lot easier.
This will irk the smaller hosts, but if your site is a serious one, put it on a serious host. Web hosting costs peanuts these days. People can be funny about spending an extra $5 a month. You'll wish you'd paid $500 when your site goes skew-whiff, and you can't get a reply from their technical support.
As you can see shared web hosting offers a myriad of options with minimal costs. A precursory search will provide ample hosts that offer reasonable prices for reliable service.