Some may recognize me as the owner of a certain web host here on WHT (I've omitted my sig for those who think I'm here to bring light to our company).

Basically I wanted to post a thread in regards to what you (a client) looks for in a web hosting company, what is it that commits you to a certain host. Of course the norms would be support, service, uptime, etc. but what else? We've done our best to try to innovate the business we're in. We actually spent time studying the market, analyzing the hosting behaviors that have benefited and plagued this market. Our custom built control panel is just one piece of proof as well as the years spent working to be where we've gotten to today. My reason for saying that (again, not to brag) but in view of my original question, do you really care? What things can a hosting company, outside of the above examples do to shine in a customers eyes?

Originally posted by ryank
What things can a hosting company, outside of the above examples do to shine in a customers eyes?

I may not be the type of customer you are looking for as I colocate a server with my hosting provider, but my primary interests in a hosting provider are:

1. Uptime
2. Uptime
3. Uptime

(by uptime I mean good network response as well as the data center being live). If you provide me as close to as 100% uptime as possible I will sing your praises to everyone I know, and tatoo your URL on my forehead :D.

Keeping promises that you may advertise. If you offer stats, then they better be available! If you offer pre-done CGI scripts then they need to be up-to-date and fix any security holes that may have been found in the scripts (formmail comes to mind).

If you have a planned outage notify everyone months in advance if at all possible.

Be honest. If YOUR router is messed up because you made a change in the settings, just say so. Don't say you are having a hardware problem... just face the music and tell the truth.