What do you look for in a hosting provider

[temi]

Originally Posted by bochgoch

I don't use small hosts who could go out of business at any time, I stick to the big-boys)

I quite agree with you on this point, I have had problem with using the small boys ages ago when the hosting industry was still young.

The big boys can be a BIG PAIN as well when one takes over the other.. for example Webfusion, Host Europe, Pipex, Magic Moments all that lot, they all seem to belong to the same company now but there was a time when it seem to be the fashion for example , I think Host Europe took over Magic Moment and a few others, another one took over Host Europe and then Pipex tool over that other one... big big chaos on the period when they integrated one company to another and change policies etc etc

And when you ring you hosting company say its called host A, then the phone is answered in the name of Host B, who you deliberately avoided when shopping for hosting, you are then told ahhh, we have taken over Host A, you are now our customer

[arunpattnaik]

Uptime
Support

These two are most important for me. I prefer hosts with live support system. and i hate to see my sites down. Grrrrr.... I hate byethost for that matter. lol