need recommendation for web hosting service

Patty,

Responding here instead of by direct email because I'd like to ask a few questions that I think most people responding will also need to know:

• How much of a footprint is the client looking for, hardware-wise? You may not know this exactly, but some guidelines or order-of-magnitude estimates can help immensely. For example, if they need 2 TB of disk space, that's important to know.
• To what extent is page-load performance an important consideration for this client? Do they have the potential for spikes in traffic that would cause scalability to be of paramount importance?
• If yes to either of the questions in the previous bullet point: Are they using, or open to using, a CDN? What fraction of their traffic is authenticated?
• Is the client running anything that requires enhanced and/or root-level access to the machine? For example, Ægir?
• Are there any unusual considerations, like a site with outré political views that engender a high likelihood of being DDoS'd? Or a site that send tens of thousands of (legitimate) email messages per hour?
• What's the client's hosting budget (in the near term)? A few dollars a month, or a few hundred?
• Related to the above, what's the client's monetary exposure to downtime? If one day of downtime costs $1,000, then the hosting budget might not be $1,000 per se, but $1,000 worth of hosting might represent cheap insurance against a day of downtime.
• How technical is the client? Do they need a great deal of support? Do they require a "panel" configuration interface (like CPanel from a $5/month hoster, or Acquia/Pantheon's offerings)? Or would they prefer to speak to someone on the phone (more like BlackMesh's approach)?

Nota bene, I do represent a Drupal hosting provider (BlackMesh). That said, these questions are generally relevant, not BlackMesh-specific.