I've been reading the old posts, but am getting a little bogged down with all the choices. What I'm hoping to do is to start a little hardware website. Nothing too fancy yet, just html, jpg and gifs. (If things go well, I'll be adding snazzyness in the future) I still need to register my domain name and would perfer to do it thru my host, just to keep things simple.
Everyone, err, well, almost everyone, seems to speak highly of hostmatters.com. They appear to fit my needs, but should I consider a better option?

I'm looking for:
domain name registration
three e-mail accounts
ftp access to my space
10MB or more of space
excellent track record for uptime
The ability to do stuff with databases on the web (I haven't figured out what all the different options with this are, but want to play with it in the future.)
Anything else that I need, but don't know that I need it, yet. ;)
Also, how do you judge how much bandwidth will be needed? I'm not hosting MP3s or mpgs, so how many estimated hits is equal to a GB of bandwidth?

Thanks for the help,

Scojo

The average web site uses 1gb or less of bandwidth. I too have heard many good things about Hosting Matters. If they offer everything you're looking for then I'd say go for it.

HTH

I would say if you are hosting a starter page, 1-2 GB of bandwidth should be plenty. Just try to keep those images smaller to help save bandwidth and for faster page load.

Most hosting packages nowadays offers huge disk space and lots of email accounts. Make sure to choose one that you're most comfortable working with.

Good luck with your host hunts !

For domain registration, I would recommend DirectNic.com.
It is the best place to manage domains reliably and cheaply, that i've found.

You don't need to get stuck registaring your domain at a place where you may not be in the future, and doesn't have a lot of features allowing you to modify things.

For webhosting, I would recommend Hostiva.com....
They have the most easyist and feature rich control panel that i've seen. And the support and features for the money can't be beat... :)

Just my thoughts... Good Luck