• A good hosting company runs 24-7 and allows for little or no down time.
• No restriction on the number of emails you require.
• Try to find a company that is local so that if you need to talk to someone you can.
• If they aren't local then at the very least make sure you have a direct line of communication with them.
• They should have the most recent supported PERL installed on their server.
• They should allow PERL CGI scripts to be run on your domain.
• They should have an executable directory such as CGI-Bin.
• They should offer SSL (Secure Server).
• They should allow write permissions for temporary directories and files.
• You need to know if the server operating system is running on Unix or Windows.
• You need enough disk space to include the content of your web pages and also the content of your emails to be stored on the server.
• Data transfer (bandwidth) requirements can be determined by how many times a user calls up your web page in a given month and the size of each of your web pages. Find out what the charges are if you go over your maximum bandwidth.