We have found 3 hosts that stand above the other hosting companies
I think this is one of the most important questions we are faced with when develping a site. Hosting can make or break a site especially when it comes to speed, down or up time and customer service.
I belive the best place to start would be to look for live support, ticketed support and a forum full of queries and answers. I believe if you can find those with a host then you know you'll be able to fix almost any problem you come across pretty quickly. The forum would also indicate a community which is also a great place to read real peoples stories, questions and general information.
I then believe that every web site is a little different and although one host may be good for one site it may not be so good for another! You really need to evaluate what your website is, the traffic it will be getting, what the website will do, and make sure these requirements match the web host you choose. Remeber everything from the amount of email account allocated, bandwidth, server storage, amount of MySQL databases and much much more.
Important tip : Remeber that if something is just too good to be true it normally is! If you find a host that offers everything you could imagine at a price next to nothing then it normally means it will end up as nothing. Do some research on the server you want to choose and check their efficiency and downtime. It all comes down to 'You Get What You Paid For'!