Encryption could be offered without certification authorities that charge huge sums for certs. And there's a link on /new right now about Symantec which continues to reinforce how relying on CAs is a broken concept.
So, right now, I have 24/7 American-based phone support (this is a must-have), 99.9% uptime guarantee, WHM/cPanel software licensing included, 60 GB disk space, 600 GB bandwidth included. By all means, if you have a VPS service that can offer all of this at less than $30 a month, I'd love to consider it. I haven't changed hosting providers in a while, but I haven't found a company capable of meeting the requirements.