I know for a fact that everyone that's ran their own website has had a problem with a web-hosting service. Whether it be up-time issues, slow loading, or just a laim-ass host that won't let you run or have access to certain scripts that your site needs to run right.
I remember this one time, I signed up to give this one host a try. I uploaded everything, installed and activated all of my cool little plugins. Added some content, then went to do a backup with this plugin called Backup Buddy and ended up giving all kind of errors. What it came down to was my host was not allowing access to a script on the server due to security reasons.
Now that would be all well and good if I was asking to edit php.ini or something. I have never had any problems with Backup Buddy ever before. It was just asking for something trivial that this host for whatever reason did not want to allow access to.
I went back on the hunt for the perfect host that day. I am rather picky when it comes to a hosting provider. To me It's a serious relationship. You rely heavily on your site being there when someone decides to go to it.
You can't believe anything you find online about a host because 99% of them are affiliates. They're just going to give the host that pays out the most the highest ranking.
One good place I found is webhostingtalk. It's a forum all about servers and hosting alike. Duh right? There is still the faked reviews, but once you filter out the crap, there is some good information there you can't find anywhere. You get to see the good and bad of a company from the ones that use them.
What is the first thing you look for when choosing a host. With me it is cpanel. Back when I was green and just starting out on the internet I had no idea about what I needed. The first few host's I went through went fine. Then I signed up with a host called hostpage or pagehost, something like that. I was with them for a few months before I realized I needed to go into cpanel and set up a cron job. It took me half a day (exaggeration) of looking before I realized that they where not even running cpanel. They where running some proprietary junk that had like 5 setting you could change. I felt like I had been horn swagled, except I was only paying like $7 a month. So that was my first lesson in web hosting. I have never been without cpanel since then.
I have realized that the one common thing these host's had was the price. Cheap!
I was not running any cutting edge website on these host's. Just a simple WordPress site. I really didn't need anything more I guess. Even though what I wanted and what I got was two different things. When it comes to hosting you get what you pay for. If you are running an eCommerce site with 20,000 visitors a day then $10.00 a month just won't do the job, but then again if you are getting that much traffic you won't have a problem paying for a dedicated server.
I still am using shared hosting. I am not bringing enough in to justify or afford anything more right now. I got lucky and was introduced to a "by invitation only" hosting service by a friend.Buy doing invite only they limit how many they put on each server which in turn lightens the server load and weeds out the spammers. I like the idea and so far everything is good.
I think if you look hard enough you will always find something wrong with any company. As long as my sites stay up and load quickly that is all I can ask for with shared hosting.