Price - Not very important to me. I currently pay over $20 / month for 8gb space 100gb b/w. Support - Very important. Tickets should be answered within an hour during business hours (7 days a week )or within an hour of business hours starting. Features - Must have ruby, php 5, mysql, cron, unlimted db, unlimted email, unlimited domains, cpanel (not some rubbish custom one), WHM Performance - Must have access to server load information such as through cpanel. Bandwidth not oversold. Servers not overloaded. Uptime - 99.9% proven via a 3rd party Notifications - All downtime notifications at least 5 business days prior to the downtime. Backup Service - I would not use a host that did not offer this. Period. I pay extra for this, the $20+/month is for hosting only. Mail Server IP - Not blacklisted.
/\ the above doesn't make much sense :S . Anyway, I do a lot in the hosting industry, and when looking for a new plan I look for something that is reasonably priced (anything too cheap may have me running, as I know the costs of running a service like this and $5 for 20 gb space and 250 gb transfer is often not economical) Support is of foremost importance to me, as If I have an issue, a friendly, personal and helpful individual concentrating on your issue is a huge relief. As for other considerations, its mostly down to personal preference, but I have to say that something I look for is a host that portrays itself well on public forums (this obviously doesnt apply in some cases). If I see a host owner flaming or reacting badly in a public/social situation (webhostingtalk.com or freewebspace.net) then that does nothing to reassure me.
Thanks for the tips, I hope that if I decide to actually give out hosting I can represent what a hosting company should be like!
Awesome Tech Support cPanel with awstats Fantastico Server located in U.S. Hate the big gun hosts. Prefer the smaller hosts. No host that has 20 logins for every little feature. Hate hosts that have the "buy this feature" in my face all the time while I have to hunt for the features I've paid for. If they have a poorly organized website, you can be sure they are haphazard. There's one big gun host that drives me insane. I have to call 4 times to get a human with brains. They seem to want to log the call as answered and say goodbye. I've been through lots and finally landed at one I like.
What is important to me is a large amount of bandwidth and hard drive for a great price. By great price I mean cheap, since that is what I am.
Like how cheap? $4.95 a month cheap with bad service and no uptime guarantee? Or $9.95 cheap with 100% perfect uptime money back guarantee!
I would also like to add on honesty of the host is very important as well Speaking of proxies, as for proxy hosting, what very important are: -reasonable price (if same quality price as shared hosting, the specs have to be at least half of that shared hosting) -there must ONLY be proxies on the server (why? proxy optimized server will give database problem if the site require large amount of DB usages) -their expereince with proxies -and other thing I've already mentioned in my other posts.
Please take your fight somewhere else... or report to mods, but please don't bring it here I'd like to add one thing I want from a host: - cpanel... that might be obvious, but it's something I want to have UPDATE: If you go too cheap (like $5)... then you are scaring away some customers. Having cheap prices gives me the image that you also have cheap (=poor) services. I also think that if you have cheap prices, you attract users who are after cheap prices - and it might mean more load to the server. Call me stupid, but it's the matter of "perceived value". After all... if one needs reliable host for his biz... then paying $5 or $15 or whatever shouldn't make a big difference.
For me it's uptime an customer support. The price I don't consider that much since almost all top hosting site prices are the same.
What the list of important should be: uptime (99.9-99.99% uptime per month) speed support price The priorities on this forum are: price . . . . . uptime speed support What I'm saying here is price is all that matters reliability of the host is not something people care about or at least that's what I get from the BST hosting section where people cry about down time every time their $5/year host goes down. If only people would learn if you spend the extra money then you'll make up with on the fact your site is not going down for days at a time each month.
Yeah...my old host owner is a scammer? $20 usd/year proxy hosting....grrr i must admit that the owner honesty also is a big factor while choosing our web host.... p/s:currently waiting for my vps being setup....
Support is the biggest thing for me. I do not like paying for something, and something goes wrong, and have to wait a long time for a fix or some help.
My personal opinions 1, Age. The older the host the more likely its around to stay. Theres to many "fly-by-night" web hosts. 2, Uptime, Websites down = money lost = companys not worth the money spent. 3, Support, If they dont have live support or IM support, I dont buy it. Waiting for emails/tickets is horrible. I dont care much for price, As i said a website thats down = money lost. Its the old saying "you get what you pay for"
i think that support is soooooo important because when i see a hosting with a dumb support i just jump out. some 'plus' are good too,like free adworks vouchers with webhosting..things like that
Well thank you all for your ideas and such. I plan on offering hosting, but just like everything else I do and offer I wont till I am sure i can offer it as good or better then those that are already hosting out there in the web host world. Thanks for your time!