What makes you chose one host over another? Let's discuss...
 

I've been trying to think about what makes one host win over my business opposed to another. Yes, I am a salesrep for a hosting company (you can see the name in my sig), but I'm not here to push them. I've got a few servers in different locations for my galleries and TGP, so don't think I just use one host. I'll list what usually wins me over, but I know it's different for everyone.

1.Quality bandwidth is a MUST for me. Has to be tier-1. I'm just picky, I guess, but Cogent/Savvis/Yipes doesn't work for me.
2. Good support. I HAVE to have 24/7 support. I prefer phone support... it always seems to me that anyone who doesn't have phone support is just "posing" as a 24/7 supported host.
3. Cool people - By this I mean the sales,support, ect. people are cool and you can actually have a conversation with them. Personal service is a must for me if you are going to win my over my money.

Does it matter to you if it's a "well known" host? I know a lot of people go with Webair because they are a very well known adult host. I will agree that having a good reputation helps.

So, what does a host have to do to win your biz?

thier name must begin with 'g' and end with 'eocities'

:1orglaugh :thumbsup

Ahahah.... man back in the day when I started making my first webpages I used Geocities and Netscape... shit that must have been '96-'97?

Depends on what kind of stuff you host.

If it is something that is making your main income and cant be down, you pay more for the best.

If its an everyday site, you find the best price with a good name and support.

For your everyday sites would you go with a host who's known to oversell? The one that surprises me lately is Dreamhost. There is a surprising amount of people who use them and then have issues... but I still see people use them. I wouldn't use them for any site, but I tend to be a lot pickier than most people.

before I joined DWHS I remember looking for the lowest price for as many domains in a plan as possible.

It wasn't untill TGP's kicked me off for having slow loading galleries that i realized that you get what you pay for and saving a couple bucks will cost you time and much more money in the long run.

Now I would suggest:

Redundant tier bandwidth without any cogent or Verio in it although I hear Verio is better now.

Phone support and in house staff to monitor things 24/7

A good reputation but only from your friends, most forum posters have alterer motives in their comments and tend follow the herd.

BBB is a reliable source of how good a host works out problems. :thumbsup

I agree ALOT about TGP's not accepting galleries because the server was too slow. Until submitting I never realized the importance of not overloading a server and that actually having 100Mbit ports, sufficient RAM, quality bandwidth, ect. really do matter for submitting.

I actually LOVE Verio bandwidth. Each to his own, I guess, but I would suggest trying it again if you ever have another small project or something like that.