I get asked this question quite regularly - and for good reason. There are thousands of hosts out there and it can be both difficult and draining searching through them all for the right one. Even a good old Google search on reviews for your short listed host (which you should always do!) cannot be entirely trusted, as some companies deliberately place high ranking bogus reviews online to catch just such searches.

So at the end of the day, it's hard to beat word-of-mouth (or keyboard) from an actual customer. I have been online since 1996 with a number of hosts - starting out in my home country of Australia and then eventually getting wise to the market and heading overseas. Rather than getting too wordy, I'll just list some of the things I've learned over the years point-wise:

• Your host doesn't have to be in your own country. There are some Search Engine Optimisation advantages for local hosting if you want to pick up searches  from your own nation - apparently - but this is less of an incentive to me than the major cost savings available offshore.

• The very cheapest is not the best way to go if you are serious about your web presence. Look instead for a balance between price and reliability/performance.

• Look for a Linux-based server. Without wanting to spark an argument, my experience is that Linux is generally much more stable and reliable than Windows-based services.
  

• Look for a fully featured control panel with lots of great low-level control over things like PHP states etc
• Look for an advanced statistics package
• Take notice of total bandwidth and disk space included. Be very wary of low bandwidths coupled with high excess data charges.
  
• Make sure you are provided with MySQL database access and a good database management facility

I've had a number of accounts with them for nearly 3 years now on their $9.95 US per month package and have absolutely no complaints. To me, they provide that perfect balance of low cost with quality service. Both server uptime and email have been very reliable and I've never come remotely close to using my very generous bandwidth or disk space quotas.

I have issued a few support tickets and have had a response within a couple of hours. I particularly like the way they say at the end of each support email:

P.S. Our number one goal is customer satisfaction. Please tell us how we are doing by submitting your testimonial at http://www.webmasters.com/testimonial.php?e=s107

But what sets them apart in my view is their custom control panel. It's amazingly comprehensive and very easy to use. I've installed all sorts of things on my sites, Joomla , custom PHP database scripts, Wordpress , Drupal and X-Cart to name a few and I've always had access to the low level settings I need to get these up and running quickly.

I could say more, but I'll stop there. Hopefully this longer than intended post will be of use to someone.