Argh shopping for a host is impossible. The tricks these companies use to sign people up is maddening. Lets have a discussion and see if we can cut through all the BS and come up with a short list of good hosts.
First some considerations:
1. You get what you pay for. There is no such thing as "unlimited bandwidth" or "free hosting" that is any good at all.
2. Sure company X has the goods, but what about customer service? My current host suits my needs from a technical standpoint but is atrocious in the customer service dept.
Sample scenario: lets say that I really messed up a clients project. My reaction would be along the lines of "I am very sorry about that, I will be sure to fix the problem AND I'd like to make up for this by giving you x hours of my time and/or a couple months free on my server. Same scenario, different players. My webhost really screws up my server config and causes me months of headaches. Their response: "well what do you want us to do about it?".
Surely there must be hosts that understand the service aspect of business?
3. The industry standard for each GB of bandwidth is 3 to 4 dollars measured on average usage. Therefore hosts that advertise that you get 400 GB of bandwidth per month with your 99 dollar account are misleading you. I have no interest in using any host that advertises these misleading numbers (so no rackshack.net).
4. Despite the fact that I expect to pay good money for good services, there is still a limit. A lot of the larger data centers charge an arm and a leg for their servers. I am looking for reasonable pricing.
Given all that...... who here can recommend a good host that meets the criteria above? I need to expand out of my current hosting center and these decisions can not be taken lightly.
Thanks!