If you need a Web host to support your family's genealogy site and nothing more, you might be OK with a freebie--its slower speeds and occasional downtime won't matter much in the scheme of things. But when you want to take your small business online, you need a host with an outstanding track record.

Amazingly, hundreds of reliable hosting services offer Web space and e-mail, with prices ranging from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars per month. So how do you choose the right host for your business?

To help you narrow the playing field, we've selected only the top performers from NetMechanic's server-reliability tests. From that group, we weeded out the services that charged more than $15 per month. Next, we kicked out any host that didn't offer a 30-day, money-back guarantee and round-the-clock technical support. And we demanded enough Web and e-mail capacity for a growing business: at least 10 POP e-mailboxes, 50MB of Web site storage, and the ability to support at least 3GB of monthly traffic.

Only four services met our aggressive requirements: OLM.net's SE2, One on One Hosting's Standard Hosting, One World Hosting's Standard 75, and The1host.com's Small Business package. These services pass the NetMechanic server-reliability tests at 99.8 percent or higher, and each comes with all the bells and whistles that a fledgling online business needs. Read on to find out which one is right for you.

CNET recommends
Of these four hosts, two stay neck-and-neck. Find out why.

How we tested
Find out how we tested each service and how well they perfomed.