Online, everyone has a favorite type of policy and a complaint about the others. I let the numbers pick the design. What I get to pick with a client is the goal, because different designs meet different goals.
Start with something that holds almost anywhere money is involved: paying more for something usually means getting less out of each dollar. Some actively managed mutual funds charge a lot, and the long-term data says they don't beat a passive index fund, which is a fund that simply tracks an index and can cost very little. Insurance works the same way. The more commission the agent is paid, the less sits in your cash value out of the gate.
Commission is the part of your premium that goes to the agent who sold the policy. When I run the numbers on one carrier's products, the lower I make my commission, the better the policy performs. It's very rare that a higher commission leaves you with more money. That doesn't mean a company that pays more can't have the better product overall. You compare the best design from company A against the best design from company B, then decide. Some designs are built to deliver more value down the road in exchange for a higher cost at the beginning. Apples to apples, though, a lower commission means lower costs in year one and in year thirty.
I push for money you can reach early because life gets in the way. Say someone commits a large amount to a policy, then the economy turns or work dries up and they can't make the payments. If I had designed that policy around year thirty, with no cash value available at the start, they'd lose all of that money so that a better dividend environment might add a little three decades later. That trade doesn't make sense to me. I walked through how I weigh these choices in a short answer on what the best design for a life insurance policy looks like.
The other design question is how long you want to pay in. One client of mine puts in $130,000 a year, and he knows he'll do it for seven to ten years and be done. He isn't planning on thirty. If you do want a longer pay period, we can design a policy that allows it, and that can mean a different carrier fits better.
An illustration is a projection and not a promise, so look first at the numbers you can check soonest. If you're comparing two quotes, ask each agent to show you the cash value at the end of year one and year two for the same premium, and ask how the commission was set.