Start with the uncomfortable part: siding is not what keeps your house dry. Siding is a rain screen. It takes the brunt of the weather, but water gets past every siding material eventually, at the seams, around the windows, and behind the trim. What keeps the wall dry is the layer underneath, and that layer is where re-siding jobs are won or lost.
That layer means housewrap with taped seams, flashing over every window and door head, and correctly lapped transitions so water running down the wall is always directed outward rather than trapped behind a board. When we pull siding off a Georgia house and find rotten sheathing, it is almost never because the old siding was a bad product. It's because there was no head flashing over the windows, or the wrap was lapped backward, and eleven summers of humidity had nowhere to go.
Once that's right, the material choice is about maintenance and appearance. Fiber cement, most commonly James Hardie, is the workhorse here. It doesn't rot, insects ignore it, it holds paint for fifteen years or more, and it handles heat and humidity without moving much. It's heavy, it needs proper cutting and fastening, and it costs more to install than vinyl.
Cedar, whether shingle or board and batten, is the one people fall in love with, and for good reason. Nothing else has that texture. It's also the one that asks the most from you: it needs to breathe, it needs to be finished on all six sides before installation, and it wants a re-coat every several years in our sun. On a shaded mountain elevation cedar ages beautifully. On a west-facing wall in full Georgia sun, it will ask for attention.
Vinyl is the budget option and it's not a bad one when it's installed correctly, which mostly means hung loose enough to expand and contract. Nailed too tight, it buckles in July, and you'll see the waves from the street. Its real limitation is that it's a shell over the wall rather than a system, so the flashing and wrap behind it matter even more than with the other two.
Whichever you choose, the questions to ask the contractor are the same. Are you stripping to sheathing? Are you replacing rotten sheathing or covering it? What are you doing at the window heads? If those answers are vague, the siding material won't save you.