What it ultimately comes down to is whether or not they can backup what they say they do and what their definition of good customer service is. Although romes did cover just about everything, I thought I would state my honest opinion.

Uptime, network stability, performance.

Network and price.

When you run your own service you dictate how it operates.

If the network is great - you won't get support issues etc. Just depends how you or the host operates.

great advice , thank you for sharing .

support support support. If you don't have support what does the client do. NOTHING. Then comes backups etc...

The most important in uptime and support.

even companies that publish Uptimes is good as a reference .. but i am not sure how many end users pay attention. -
other hosts do - and maybe for resellers ..hmmm .. they might look --

it would be nice to have non hosts answer this question

when i ask customers answers are all over the map but most say -- were refereed by

this is a company that publishes hosts uptime
http://www.webhostingstuff.com/uptim...lNetworks.html

sorry had to sneak out 99.96 % uptime there

since Jan 2005 and we run our rebelnetworks.com on a shared server with our customers not on a dedicated servers with redundancy so we can get 100% shown -
one outage actually includes a big migration out of a baltimore data center to a texas data center

But again - if there are end users not in selling web hosting - it would be nice to hear what they look for

i hope # 1 would not be 1000000TB of diska space followed by
1000000 Unlimited data transfer hahah

In today's hosting industry, everything is based on lies when it comes to the big hosting corporations.

Unlimited Space / Unlimited Transfer
We all know this simply isn't true. Can you buy and Unlimited hard drive? No. Simply put this is a lie. Search the forums, search google, you will find horror stories of web hosters using not even 10% of their resources and getting kicked off with no warning and no where to go. You are only a quality customer if you DO NOT use what you pay for.

"Fake" Top Web Hosting Sites
Search web hosting, and you are sure to find "Top 10 Hosting" web sites. Most all are fake, implanted by web hosting companies, posting themselves as #1. Lies!

24/7 Support
Yes someone is available at 4am in the morning. It's either some kid getting paid minimum wage, simply manning a chat line reading out of a manual or it's some guy named "Bob" in India, who really is don't nothing more than answering calls, not doing anything. In reality administrators must answer and/or resolve most questions and support issues. Most administrators are fast asleep at 4am in the morning.


I'm not saying all are bad, but honesty is a large ethical missing part in the industry. This is why there is such a gap between "cheap" hosting and other hosting. There are few and many web hosts who offer quality over quantity. If the web host boasts hosting 500,000 websites, do you really get personalized service? Will they really care if you are a happy customer or whether you stay with them? Even if it creates competition with me, it'd be great to see more honesty in the industry!

twhnman: Absolutely.

If there were more honesty, less hardened rules on many of the hosting forums for newer hosts to get their name out, and less "sneaky" Top 10 tactics, maybe a new host could actually survive in this industry and supplant some of the bigger names who don't always keep up their end of the bargain.

I think these elements are most important.
Uptime
Security
24/7 Support
Space

Its a simple explanation from which a new one can make research on each one and conclude to a host. Its not easy to say one is best, as it depends on the customer's satisfaction.

Always consider below mentioned short points:

-> Timely update when you exceed bandwidth or disksapce
-> Free setup on initial stage
-> 24X7 fast professional support
-> Latest hardware configuration of server
-> 99.99% network SLA
-> 100% uptime guarantee
-> Excellent availability and security of your hardware