Over the years, as a web designer I have used numerous web hosting suppliers to manage customer websites and for my own sites (e.g. back in 2014, one of the web hosts I used was Vidahost, which I found quite good.)

However, in my view over time, many smaller innovative hosting businesses that provided good, attentive and reliable service for their customers have been 'swallowed up' by larger corporations, who commonly seem to 'buy up the customers' without then providing adequate service. This results in reduced competition and fewer suppliers a customer can choose from.

Website owners can choose a good web host 'today' and then 'tomorrow' find themselves corralled into migrating, or have their services cancelled, cut, or otherwise run by an entity with a bad service track record and little care about individual customers.

I have seen many website customers have their websites and strategy wrecked, just because the 'new', bigger, 'better' owner 'needed' to do the 'very next best thing' (or maybe just extract more profit out of loyal customers while 'offshoring support'.)

In these situations, I do not predominately blame the support staff. They do their best, they do not hire themselves, do not choose the infrastructure, company policy or decide how many customers are then stacked onto individual servers, or write the standard replies given.

But it is also true that not everyone is 'cut out' to provide quality technical support. It requires good honest communication, customer empathy, problem-solving abilities, technical knowledge and experience.

It also never ceases to amaze me how the overall reviews and rankings for these web hosts can bear little resemblance to the 'facts on the ground'.