Everyone does it. Web host companies come and go, but I am about to make the leap into hosting(with some great peers), and am interested in knowing what you like to see in web host that's not being done right now, or something that's done really right.

Our company is planning a different twist on products and we are hungry for suggestions.

PS: Some of our products will be marketed through a Visual Site Designer front end. You know, why not put your best foot forward.

I think customer service is number one. If I can't get a response within 24 hours I'm not really happy.

So quick response time, support with a smile and eager to help sort out any issue. Add that to good prices and reliable connections and you should do well.

Of course a well laid out web site is a good selling point to start, making sure your spelling and grammar is spot on, your site easy to navigate, simple with no bells and whistles so it loads quickly, nothing that flashes or makes a noise.

Probably a few other things but basically make it easy to find answers and to get support with a smile.

Thanks for the feedback. No doubt, good customer service has to happen. It seems in too many cases some of our future competitors fade into the darkness of 404 url's for several reasons. Our hope is when it's all said and done, we make a mark with the products and services we offer.

We want "to boldly go" where no hosting company(our size) has gone before...

I would also mention up-time as very important indeed for hosting services.

Then a lot of people love to have a proper, full-fledged cpanel, where they can do things themselves, and not a 'crippled' version where they have to call support just to be able to set up subdomains or so.

And maybe some easy to install and easy to use cms package.

Might I add on to the Support issue and say "DO" actually READ the emails that people send you for support, don't use a autoresponder that spits out canned responses to what it is detecting as the problem, "DON'T" use canned responses yourself to your customer's emails unless they truly answer the problems.

I can't tell you how many times I've had to spend 10 emails to cover one issue because they kept spitting out the canned responses they "thought" addressed the situations instead of actually reading the full email. Instead they are either skimming the email and pulling the words they are detecting as the problem and 90% of the time they miss the entire real problem due to not truly reading. Then of course they spit out their generic emails they think cover the situation. When it doesn't? Let me tell you they then wish it when they start getting my next emails

DO keep backups of your customers servers for more than a week (30 days is a good idea), or in the case of the hosting company I just got done dealing with, more than 2 days! Needless to say my backup was lost because not only did they not keep it longer than 2 days, but the morons didn't think to make a copy of it while we were discussing the problems and they let it expire! LOL total ignorance and I have no patience for that at all!

All the features in the world can be added or subtracted very easily, but customer service should be your number one priority and if that gets messed up, all the features in the world will not fix that person's attitude towards you or their opinions of you or your company.

Also only make promises you can keep. Better to under promise and over deliver than over promise and under deliver.

Wow, this is good stuff and I can relate to what everyone has said here to an extent. Web host that makes promises they don't keep, emails that are not read carefully, and not to forget those core responsibilities of uptime and backups. I think a huge issue for many small hosting companies is not having man power to give good service on the back end while marketing the product(no disrespect if you have a small hosting co. because it doesn't apply to everyone).

Another issue is not having some security in knowing they are going to be around a while.

This is great, thanks folks!

Yes MANY hosting companies do this. I don't think they even READ the question. Problem is, there is SO much competition in the hosting industry that web companies have to cut many corners in order to offer low prices and compete. That means hiring fewer staff people for customer support and making them answer questions really fast. Also, it means overloading shared hosting servers with about twice as many web sites as should actually be on there. It also means not backing up regularly and not monitoring the servers. The last host I had, I had to call them whenever my site was down. Happened about once a month, no one was paying attention to what was going on in the server room.

How many concurrent connections do you plan to allow for each hosting account? Will you allows chat rooms? Unlimited addon domains? WIll you support coldfusion, php etc...

James, why does your SEO report link in your sig take you to a Google Map?

I second and third and fourth listening to what your customers are actually asking.

I have just had an issue with one of my web hosts that I have decided not to renew with and still have a week left on the contract. I emailed to say that it was my intention not to renew and what did I have to do not to renew and they immediately cut my account off with all my data there.

I was about to transfer all my data including email accounts, redirects and sub-domains over to my other host and it all disappeared in a flash! I should have had another week there to do it all. Not happy!

I emailed them and told them I wasn't happy and they reinstated the main website but no data there for email addresses, subdomains and redirects which was the important bits as I do have the site itself saved.

So by not listening to what I asked they have caused me a lot of grief and have no chance of me ever returning or recommending them to anyone else.

Word of mouth is a powerful thing in internet business.