After you feel comfortable with the level of support a provider offers, consider what features are available. A basic understanding of what you know (and what you don't) will help direct your choice. If creating a site from scratch is intimidating, look for a provider that offers free website building software. This will save you from knowing html. You will also need a domain name to get your site up and some Shared Web Hosting U providers even offer these for free. A free domain name should not be the main selling point for which provider you choose. After all, you can purchase a domain name from anyone from $2.99 - $12.99/year.
There are limits as to what can be put on the webpage though. Every website will be different just like every web hosting company. There is going to be a lot of disk space for some companies that specialize is web hosting but not all of them are going to have an unlimited amount of space.
Which all brings me back to what is Affordable Web Hosting? I have my pages hosted at GVO and I pay a higher monthly cost than if I used certain other cheaper hosts.
SMTP is Simple Mail Transfer Protocol which is used for outgoing Email Server. Most hosting companies do not offer access to SMTP servers as they can be difficult to maintain and defend and the want to cut corners with their customers.
Before deciding on a snappy name for your new Shared Web Hosting UK property, what do you want your site to say about your business? Are you going to offer information only, will it be an online catalogue, will you sell online or do you just want to encourage visitors to call your office? If you already have a company registered then it makes sense to register a domain name in the same name. If you are just setting up in business try and make sure your domain name matches your trading name.
Windows or Linux: Do you know if your site needs to run on a MS Windows server with FrontPage extensions or does it need PERL, PHP or MySQL? These things you will need to find out if you intent to run a successful small business web site.
Having looked at several of the top web host providers in the past, my choice is Vodahost. This is mainly because I prefer their website builder because it allows me the most control over designing my website.