The second is uptime, integrity and reliability. Short of Hiring your own IT department, it is important that your domain and emails be accessible as often as possible. While there are generally a lot more issues with emails than domains, it can be quite an experience with some providers to find resolutions and in some cases the issues are not resolvable.

The third is communication and interaction, being able to resolve issues accurately and in a timely manner. No one expects the world to stop spinning when there is an issue, but they do expect their time communication the issue be respected and emails read and understood.  There are times when I have communicated very specifically through emails or posting, especially with my experience, and received a generic reply asking me something that was stated in the very first line of my original request. What a waste of time, and if a domain or email account is down due to the issue, the ETA just got booted out the window. Bottom line, you need a hosting service provider that "For The Money", provides adequate support with respect to your needs.

Finally, in most cases, affordable. This has a different meaning to everyone. Here is my meaning and what is shared by most. Most hosting accounts are "Space" on a hard drive in a server that contains huge and many hard drives. Everything the hosting service provider provides is preconfigured and/or delegated resources. The production of a website is the owners responsibility and can be done either through their own interface with the hosting company, their own personal time publishing or hiring someone to do it. Server related issues are far and few when there is nothing done to the "Space" on the server, it's when the "Space" is used that issues follow. In all three applications, the files on the "Space" is not the hosting services responsibility, this includes backing up the files. So, since I publish my own sites and resolve my own issues, I don't want to pay a lot of money for hosting services. So for me the window of a fair price for hosting services, factoring in the size of space, the support level and applications is between $85 and $125 per year. This to me is fair and reasonable.

With that said, I primarily use StartLogic Hosting Services and recommend a company name IPOWER as well which at one time was an affiliate of StartLogic and is now partnered with EIG. With our services we recommend these hosting providers due to our experience with them and the level of support we receive.  We are satisfied with the applications, control panel and user interface for the annual fees they collect. Is there better, probably, but we don't shop at the expense of our clients.

We generally open a PHP/HTML hosting account for $100 per year and an ASP/HTML hosting account for $125 per year through these services for those we provide services to. Other additional hosting services are available such as VPS hosting if required to provide service. Most of our sites are very satisfied and run smoothly on the basic PHP/HTML services.