There are hundreds of hosting services that will host your website for a fee. Selecting a website hosting service (ISP) depends on your business needs. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What kind of website do you have? If you want to host a small, five-page website describing your business, the answer is very clear - pick any reputable ISP. If you want to host an e-commerce website or a community forum, you might want to pay attention to how much bandwidth comes with your package. If you expect to have thousands hits a day, you might want to budget for it. But honestly, pick the cheapest one but monitor your usage. If you frequently go over the limit, then you can upgrade. Think of it like your cellphone plan and minutes you are allowed to use.
• Should I pick shared (virtual) hosting or a private server? If you are a small business, go with virtual or shared hosting. It is the cheapest option and all it means that your website willl be sharing a server with other websites. No big deal. If you ever need to upgrade to a private server, you can do it later. There are other types of servers you can pick - ignore them all. Shared hosting is the option for you.
• What platform to pick? Here you will have two major choices: Windows (Microsoft) or UNIX (LINUX). Ask your web developer which one they use. It would not matter to you at all which one to chose. It does not matter if you work on a Mac or PC at home. Don't make it too complicated. Ask the developer a question and go with their answer. Better yet, ask your website developer which provider they prefer and consider their choice. Never consider hosting your website on your web developer's computer. Always pick one of the big guys
• What hosting features should I look for? Ask your website developer which features they need. Most of the packages are standard and will have much more than you need. Usually, developers care about FTP access (ability to create FTP users and scripting. For UNIX/LINUX platforms usually they would require PHP and Perl. For Windows you need to look for ASP and ASP.NET. Check if the packages support Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress, Drupal, NukePHP, etc. Most of them do. On the database side, look for MySQL and PostgreSQL on UNIX and Microsoft Access and SQL Server for Windows.
• Should I buy a domain name? Most hosting services throw in a free domain with your hosting purchase. Investigate beforehand which domains you would want to buy and include one with your webhosting package. Remember, that you do not have to buy both domain and hosting from the same company. You can host your website with someone else if you like your domain registrar. If you want to transfer domains to the same company you host your website on, look into requirements: most companies require for you to keep your domain with them for at least 90 days. Some company will charge you a transfer fee (about $10) if you transfer your domain to a different company. My advice - keep records of what you bought and where and don't worry about who registered your domain. As long as you are the one who is paying for it (and not your web designer, brother, or lawyer), you are fine. If you forgot who you registered your domain with, www.netcraft.com will help you out.
• How many email addresses should I pick? None. Your hosting account usually comes with a number of email addresses. That number is often 5,000. If you need more than that, you should consider outsourcing the whole project to an IT firm. Most of the accounts have unlimited forwarding addresses too. Do not buy a dedicated email package with your website hosting account. You can always add it later
• Will I pay extra for ecommerce? It would depend on your account if you need to pay extra. Usually, you will pay extra for a shopping cart application that you add to your account. It is usually an "add-on" which you can purchase separately later.

Webhostingrating regularly provides a list of best ISPs based on customer ratings. Check out their list. You can sort and filter your list by hosting platform, your budget, CMS, etc. They also have more information on this topic to help you decide what you want. Rule of thumb is: go with the cheapest option that offers all features you need and if you hit the limits, you can upgrade later.