When you're setting up business online, the provider you choose for your ecommerce web hosting is absolutely one of the most critical decisions you make. In a manner of speaking, this is where you will live for the rest of your business life - and you know what a hassle moving can be.

It is the location where your customers will come, where your online "building" will be. You want to make sure that your customers can visit your place and do business with you, and have a pleasant experience so they'll come back again and again. You don't want to have any problems either, because you're open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and any time people can't get to you, you're losing money.

You want to know that you can set up your shop and have everything work the way you expect it to, plus if ever any issues do come up, they'll be resolved immediately. Not in a few hours, now. So you want a hosting company that will be reliable, be trouble-free, plus won't eat into your profits.

Here are several of the really important things to look for when choosing a good web host.

1. How long have they been around? When it comes to your website, you want to work with a company that has been around long enough to have perfected what they do.

2. Do they have great customer support that is available around the clock There is nothing worse than having your site go down and having to wait until they decide to come to work. The hours seem like days and will be costing you money.

3. Do they have a state-of-the-art site themselves? You can bet that if a hosting company has an unprofessional website then the company is also run sloppily. You want to make sure that your hosting company has high standards for themselves.

4. Are they certified hacker safe? If you are going to be collecting names and emails on your site, then you absolutely have to know that your clients' information is safe. If this gets lost, it can kill your business.

5. Are they willing to help you get set up - at no charge? Services such as free transfer of your domains, files, databases, etc. is a huge time saver, and if they truly want you to do business with them, they'll help you take care of these matters. A truly friendly host will give you a domain name at no extra charge.

6. Are they asking a reasonable fee for their services? Though they may be hard to find, there are several good and reliable hosting companies for under $10 per month.

Your web hosting should be one thing that you set up once and basically forget about it after that. This is one aspect of having a website that you don't want to spend your time on once you're underway. If you currently have a host where you know everyone in the support department from calling so much, then perhaps you should consider changing your hosting provider.