After the owner has selected a number of designers, that have shown the ability to create a site the way the owner envisions his own, he will then consider the other areas of money and speed and personality until the final choice is made. When we look at hosts, everything seems to take a different twist. We seem to look at price first without regard to the other areas of service being provided. After we have found the correct price ranges, we then look at the services offered. Once this list has been created we can look at other sites on the server and run the trace routes to check for speed and reliability.
Reliability is a volatile situation.
The same host that had been up for three months straight can easily be put into overdrive on the fourth month leaving them sluggish or even down for any number of minutes, hours, days, or weeks, depending on their upgrade path, if they have a path at all. Options seem to come and go with hosts as technology offers new things, servers are upgraded and changes are made to meet demand. Tech support seems to fall into the same category as speed and reliability. The only thing left from the above list is price, which for the most part seems to hold steady if you decided to pre-pay for a year in advance. Luck, seemed to be the most dependable aspect of ending up with a decent host.