There are mainly two types of web hosting providers, shared and dedicated web hosting and the latter is much more expensive. If you are a new comer to the website and internet field, I suggest to start with a shared web hosting provider.
This means your Shared Web Hosting company will keep up the maintenance and updates, and provide technical support for its users. This is a huge benefit for those who do not have the time, knowledge or resources (like many small businesses I know) to do this. In this sense it makes huge sense to go with Shared Web Hosting. The average cost of a reliable shared web hosting package is less than $7.00 per month. You will be paying at least ten times that amount for a dedicated server.
User generated content simply put, is allowing your site visitors to add their content to your site. It may be some feedback on a product or review. It could be a posting on your Shared Web Hosting UK forum. How about letting visitors post articles to your site or allowing them to add themselves to your business directory?
Popularity does not guarantee you a good service. Many popular host start of small and offering a good service but once their popularity grows they start to become complacent and their product suffers. It may not always be the case but it happens more than you'd believe. Also becoming popular nowadays can simply be a case of having the largest advertising budget.
Just because you have used Affordable Web Hosting doesn't mean it has to be poor quality hosting. There are lots of very good quality hosts available at very affordable prices. Also be aware of what comes as standard with your hosting and what comes as paid extras. Check that your potential host uses a popular control panel such as Cpanel. Some hosts use free panels and although they work fine, if the time comes when you have to move your website to a new host, control panels like Cpanel make the process a lot easier.
Bandwidth Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred over the network in a fixed amount of time. On the Net, it is usually expressed in bits per second (bps) or in higher units like Mbps (millions of bits per second). 28.8 modem can deliver 28,800 bps, a T1 line is about 1.5 Mbps.
My one bit of good advice is do not sign up with any server for a long period of time to start with. It will be cheaper in the long run but at first just sign up for a little while. Try before you buy, make sure that the service provider is able to meet your expectations. If it does, then sign up for a longer period and save money.