A few simple rules for purchasing hosting, feal free to post your comments in the Discussion thread;

Choosing a host
Bandwidth or Space?
The number 1 thing you must look for when purchasing hosting is to make sure you know what you need, if it's Bandwidth (transfer) or Space (webspace). If you are looking to host a picture website, adult website, gaming website, file server etc. you MUST get a high bandwidth connection, you cannot expect to run sites like that without running up alot of bandwidth, now some hosts charge a bucket load for bandwidth, others charge a stable price for it, but it's always best to shop around ALOT before purchasing big bandwidth hosting. A reminder though, if you see somthing that says "Uncapped" or "Unlimited" bandwidth / transfer, you MUST read the terms, because it will most likely say somthing like "If you use constant excessive bandwidth we may be forced to suspend / terminate your account", alot of sites do this but you dont know because alot of people dont read the terms properly. Make sure with your hosting package you get about 8 - 10 times your space limit in bandwidth or else you may end up running out pretty fast if your website / file server becomes very popular.

Now space on the other hand, is good to keep family photo's, vacation videos and things like that on, stuff to keep limited, that way you just have to buy alot of space and about 1 - 3 times your space limit in bandwidth, which shouldn't be too expensive.

Good Support or Bad Support
One thing you must watch out for is support, some sites may offer a good service, but bad support. You may think you wont need much support, but believe me, it is very hard to get support on just E-Mail / Basic Help Desk because you can sometimes end up with no replies in days which could be critical to your home / business.

Alot of peoples idea of good support, is any support, this is wrong and you must get good support, if you have an advanced help desk and trouble ticket anytime, trouble ticket anytime means that you can submit a trouble ticket at any time you want, and be able to get a quick response (12 - 24 hours), if you dont think your host lets you get that kind of support, consider another host because you may not think it is neccisary, but if you intend to run somthing successful you need support!

Also good support means they have a backup help desk on another server, incase somthing happens to the origonal server that makes it inoperable thus leaving you stranded for technical support, but it is very hard to come across a host that offers that as built in and will usually charge you a bucket load for that kind of support.

Live chat is very good support, as long as the hours are good, if you cant get good live chat during your business time shop around a bit more you may find a better one. 24 hour live support and a help desk is as good as it gets, if you have that all you need is a good plan to purchase.

Extras
Now extras are important if you want a good peice of software, but cant afford a license for it. Some hosts purchase alot of licenses for a peice of software and sometimes throw it in free with a package or a special deal, but they most offen charge you a bit extra a month for it.

It is always good if you can get support for your extras, so if anything breaks you can get someone to look into it A.S.A.P.

Now alot of hosts charge heaps for extra packagte items, like extra MySQL databases, the most you should pay extra for *ANY*SQL DB is $7.99 one time, you shouldn't have to pay for anything else except maybe a FTP account and or domains, E-Mails are very cheap to run so if your host is charging you heaps for it, drop them because they pay virtually nothing to give you E-Mails.

Make sure if it says unlimited anywhere on extras you read the terms because it may well be limited and big companies have ways of avoiding responsibility.

Money back gaurantee
Money back gaurantee's / free trials are great for anyone who isn't sure about a host, because then if you dont approve of their services you can dump them and not loose anything, even if it's only a few dollars.

Set-up fees and activation
Now unless your host offer's somthing special you shouldn't have to pay any set-up fee's, unless you dont get auto-activation because if you dont get auto-activation then they most likely actually have to do somthing. But if you get auto-activation you should never be paying start up fee's, they are just a way for the companies to screw you even more. Always keep away from start up fee's greater than $40 for a normal package or $100 for a dedicated package etc. because it should never cost alot to start up.