7. Cgi-bin. This is a default folder where script can be placed and from which they can run, but which also has some built-in protections to keep your scripts a little safer. It's not a fail-safe, it's just a protected directory where you can safely put some of your scripts. Not everyone's going to use scripting (aka programming), but when you add in things like a formmail script it's nice to have a slightly safer place to put it.

8. A reasonable amount of web space and bandwidth. One of the things that some of the larger hosts push is a lot of web space. This is fine if you have lots and lots and lots of media files (movies, images, audio files) you want to keep on the web, but otherwise it means a little. A good website is one that is fine-tuned to load fast, and that means keeping file sizes small. For the average small business website it's very rare to go over 50 MB, many of them are half that. So why have 500 GB of space that you will never use? Evaluate what you really need, then choose accordingly. A huge amount of web space is a selling point for some of these large providers, but it means very little to the average website owner.

9. Webmail.  Webmail is the same thing that you use when you have a Yahoo or Gmail address--it enables you to read and reply to your email via a web page, so that you can access your domain email from any computer with an Internet connection. This is very useful if you're away from home or visiting out of town, and didn't bring a laptop along, but want to keep up with your email. This is offered by most hosting companies in one form or another, but whether it's really reliable or not can be another story.

And for e-commerce: 

10. SSL. This stands for "Secure Socket Layers"... what it does is enable you to run a secure shopping cart (with the addition of a secure certificate), so it must be available to you either with the hosting plan you've chosen, or you have the ability to upgrade your plan on the fly via your control panel.

11. MySQL or MS SQL. Both of these are major database systems that allow you to run things like shopping carts with large amounts of data. 

Other highly useful, but not essential, tools: 

12. SMTP email. SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, and refers to the server by which email is sent, as opposed to the server by which it's received. While this is not an essential, it sure helps if you want to use your domain email address and you have to use another Internet Service Provider (ISP) because your regular ISP is not available--you're on a business trip with your laptop for instance and have wireless Internet access, but not through your usual provider. This allows you to "substitute" the SMTP server information and use your email program as you normally do, without being reliant on your usual ISP. I offer this with every hosting account, and have made use of it many times when my broadband is down and I have to use a dialup account.

13. Front Page Extensions. If you're still using Front Page (now discontinued by Microsoft), you will want to have Front Page Extensions available to you.

Useful to some, but rarely used:
These are the items that a lot of hosting companies push to help sell their services, but they really do little for most.

1.Pre-installed scripts. A long list is often offered as an enticement, but when you actually get into them you find that they are open source scripts that are easily available and still need to be set up. Most of the time these are wasted, partly because a lot of the features are often disabled for safety on the server.

2. A gazillion email addresses that you'll never use. If your company is small, you're not going to need 1000 email addresses. This is often used as a selling point, but it doesn't do you any good if you're never going to use them.

*     *     * 

There are lots of features offered by many hosting companies, it is up to you to evaluate what you really need and then search for a reliable host that provides it. If you're not a web designer this can be tough, but a good hosting company will help you figure out what you need and explain it all to you in terms you can understand.

They key is not to be fooled by price--a very low price like $4 hosting is often a "leader", getting you in the door then selling you more and more just to make the hosting usable. By the time you're done it's no bargain. Shop for the features you need, then make your choice based on those features and the hosting company's service.