In reply to donnacha.

Donnacha,
Nudge nudge, wink wink, as to the host. ;) I guess I mostly lucked out while there, oddly enough.

To your good point about newbie reassurance, WP is, to some degree, a victim of its own success. You have newish people who have never used anything else, so they are in that bubble. They're easy marks for "WP" hosting. And being in the bubble, they stay unaware of the big threat of alternatives to WP itself.

Unlike the rest of the social media world, where over-sharing is ubiquitous, you're right, hosting businesses (and many other WP-oriented businesses) are very opaque about their policies, activities, and so on.

My own host doesn't mention WP at all in its listed offerings. They are just really good, give great support, and don't oversell their servers.

Best, Dave