Small Business Email
As hinted at earlier, having your website go down at an inopportune time can hurt your business. BUT... for many small businesses, web hosting and email providers are one and the same. This is not neccesarily a bad thing, as there are natural connections between the two, as well as many small business web and email providers that do both very well.
HOWEVER... while losing your web site for a few business hours can be a nuciance, losing your Email connectivity can hurt a lot more. Your customers may percieve you as unresponsive, or they may receive "bounce-back" out of service messages if thier email server fails to contact yours.
Other factors to consider are spam and virus filtering features. Did you know that some email hosting solutions actually offer solutions that block 99% of spam so it NEVER reaches your inbox. Server provided services can also help alleviate security concerns caused by viruses and spyware.
All of this speaks to the importance of choosing web and email hosting for your small business that is reliable, yet affordable. Another important thing to consider is the features available with a given web hosting provider.