I have had small clients in a variety of situations not unlike those you refer to. On some ocassions, it has been me who has taken the walk becuase I just don't want to deal with un-cooperative hosting outfits. In other cases, I have not found it difficult to move small clients to servers that I control - this tends to make it very easy!
Larger clients tend to be much easier to work with. Either we end up providing hosting services or we have clients who already have facilities with companies like Q9 Networks who might be expensive, but boy are they easy to get along with.
However, I do note your apparent concern about the way we sometimes respond to Monks who are having difficulty in this regard. Some Monks do assume that "anything will build", and I have seen people get unhelpful responses here when they are having those types of problems. The same question asked by the same person in a module specific mailing list will receive a much better response.
jdtoronto