Hourly billing if possible, if not, money-back guarantee. PayPal subscription since I can't be arsed to remember yet-another-bill, but still want to monitor and cancel unused sub when I have the time.

Hardware should be better than Vultr at the equivalent monthly price because otherwise, I'd just go with Vultr. This also includes IPv6 support and bandwidth allocation. So if there's no IPv6, ingress isn't free, or monthly egress is less than 2TB, I'll skip it.

The company should already exist for more than three years because otherwise, it's more likely to just dissolve by the next month. Long existence also means I can just peek for yabs results from other customers instead of taking the spec claim.

The panel should allow me to preload my keys to a fresh install, the images should include the latest Debian and Ubuntu LTS, a recovery console, and 2FA.

If I ever need to contact support, it means they have unacceptable reliability and/or restrict users' ability to fix their own instances. This means I'd just cancel my subscription regardless of how fast and helpful the support.