I have a dedicated server from Liquid Web. I can't say enough good things about them. The service is really top notch.<p>a) Communication: they actually speak English, you aren't forwarded to some call center in India<p>b) Response: If you call someone, will pick up within 3 rings. If you email you'll get the first response after 5 minutes. They really are around 24/7. I once needed something done at 3:30 am, I got a reply to my email in less than 10 minutes.<p>c) Its all managed, you really don't need to know anything about servers. Need a library installed? Just drop them a line, Can't figure out how to setup your server? Drop them a line. And there are no support ticket fees or any other crap like that, that other managed hosts charge.<p>I mean honestly, if Rackspace is any better, there better be some sex involved while I wait for them to fix the server. And with the higher prices Rackspace has, that better be the case.<p>Note: You should really only be using them with dedicated servers, their shared/virtual is a little bit pricey<p>And to those that complain about prices, think to yourself, would you rather get a problem resolved in 20 minutes, or 20 hours.
I have a VPS from WiredTree (wiredtree.com) and I can't recommend them highly enough. Good guys, great support. The only negative is that the intro VPS (with only 256MB of RAM) is a little weak, and can choke on cPanel. If you're looking for a fully-managed VPS, go with WiredTree.<p>For smaller-scale sites, Media Layer (medialayer.com) gets nothing but rave reviews on the webostingtalk.com forums, though I don't have any first-hand experience with them. I've used EngineHosting (enginehosting.com) for a couple ExpressionEngine based sites for clients, and they're great, too.
For Rails/Merb projects that can afford it, I love Engine Yard. They're way more expensive than VPS hosts, but you get a support team who specialize in Rails/Merb deployment. It's like outsourcing your sysadmin team, too.<p>For lower budget, I love Slicehost.<p>I either want full control, or someone I trust in control.
Rackspace - bar none - for anything mission critical in a dedicated setup. I've used Softlayer, HostMySite, and LiquidWeb before in an attempt to save a few bucks a month, but regretted it almost immediately.<p>In multiple cases of downtime, the only response from Softlayer was "not really sure what happened." With Rackspace, I can sleep at night - and the extra $150 a month per server is well worth it to us. Peace of mind is invaluable, and expertise is irreplaceable.<p>I also recommend Slicehost highly.
Been using JaguarPC (jaguarpc.com) shared hosting account since the past 5 months. The support is good. And they have these tech support guys who could actually can understand my noob language(and showed me around the settings) when i tried to play around with my account.<p>One of my friends from US told me that slicehost is good and i see a lot of fan comments above.<p>I have also been using Google AppEngine since a week. Its blazing fast. But they currently have only free accounts and have mentioned on their blog that they will start a paid cloud hosting service soon for those who reach their free hosting limits. Yahoo! too have announced that they will soon offer cloud hosting. So if u you wait for a couple months you might get to choose between EC2 and Google and Yahoo and slicehost and others. Because if you are using php, i have a wild guess that Yahoo's hosting will be php inclined(most of their services are php-inclined). If u are comfortable with python, go for Google AppEngine.<p>Also a word of CAUTION: if you are going to choose shared hosting packages, then always read terms of service agreement and whatever agreements they have. I once used a one month trial coupon with Hostgator and stumbled upon their T.O.S. It was clearly mentioned that they allow only '50000 inodes' on shared hosting accounts, which in simpler words translates that you can have a max of 50000 files. So if you are going to host something like a social networking site, beware! Your users might get to the max files limit if u are going to have a feature like photo uploading.
Hurricane Electric shared hosting.<p>Pros: super low latency connections, ssh access, decent setup, no frills, $10/month.<p>Cons: they don't keep their installations in the bleeding edge version-wise. I use Perl a lot. They are at 5.8.0, which is not bad, but not the very latest. Of course you can install your own anything (perl, python, ruby, etc.) in user space, which makes library management more simple too.<p>Unknowns: I've never had it tested under a serious load. Just playing around.<p>I WISH there was a host that gave me the speed, simplicity and low price of HE but also supported more than one domain name on the same account (for the same price). There are sites that do that, but typically they have something else wrong with them, such as having the "feature" of being control-panel based.
We use The Planet (<a href="http://www.theplanet.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.theplanet.com</a>) along with EC2 from AWS. I've used The Planet for about 7 years now, for both business and personal use. Good prices, decent support and a top notch network.
If you're looking for cheap dedicated hosting, I liked leaseweb, ovh and vectoral, and if a .us based host is okay, layeredtech and softlayer are excellent. Support ranges from amazing to nonexistant, but they're all _really_ cheap (except for softlayer, but you get what you pay for..) for lots and lots of transfer - I blow through a few terabytes a month on three servers, think $100/month for 3TB transfer, 250gb hdd, 1.5gb ram which slicehost can't compare to price-wise.<p>Otherwise for me it's a tie between slicehost, dreamhost (because i had a free promo code..) and asmallorange (i have a lifetime account). All of them meet different needs of mine, sooo.
I used interland.com (bought out a while ago) and serverpronto.com, but now I use business grade Verizon FIOS in my basement with a Mac Mini on a 2 hour UPS. Uptime has been 100% over the last year (except for the reboots I did for software updates).<p>I used to run a lot of mailman lists and have discovered the hardest thing to do is to get a set of "clean" IP addresses. Serverpronto was tough, they were blocked a lot. Interland was ok. My Verizon address block (I get 5 static IPs) is not on any RBLs but they sit in the middle of what are generally dynamic IPs so some big sites (esa.int, notably) reject email from my system.
I've used VPSLink on and off depending on my needs since they started, incredibly cheap service and I've yet to have any major problems. Minor issues were resolved very quickly, great support.
For personal stuff I use Tektonic who are pretty good. The price is very competative, tech support exists, and they accomodate special requests with no particular hassle (e.g. please make sure my two VPSs are in different data centers).<p>Last time they had a problem was a few years ago (server hardware failure) and they bothered to give updates frequently and rapidly opened up new temporary hosts for customers who had backups to restore from. Pretty good service for a 'no support' plan.
I use vpslink. I paid for two years in advance, and got a vps with 256MB of Ram for ~$10/month (about half the cost of slicehost).<p>Had no problems with them so far.
I use <a href="http://mosso.com" rel="nofollow">http://mosso.com</a> which is an experimental cloud hosting provider backed by <a href="http://rackspace.com" rel="nofollow">http://rackspace.com</a><p>I always get complimented on how fast my site loads and performs on it and have never had any problems that haven't been taken care of rather quickly.
I've been using vpslink.com for a few months for a few servers. One of my virtual servers has been rebooted without warning (which they say up front can happen, it's true) three or four times in the last two months. If I had anything important on that machine, I'd be somewhat unhappy, but it's hard to complain at their prices.
We've been with Rails Machine for over a year and loving it. If you need some extra support and sysadmin knowledge (aka more hands-on then Slicehost) Rails Machine is absolutely the best we could wish for.<p>And of course additionally we also use EC2 and other AWS services.
<a href="http://www.aiso.net/" rel="nofollow">http://www.aiso.net/</a><p>They are carbon free and have provided great service since 2000. They use 100% solar power and have bio-diesel backup generators. Have used them for 4 months and have had a great experience.
I support my buddy's business by using one of his dedicated servers: <a href="http://wdservers.com" rel="nofollow">http://wdservers.com</a><p>He runs his own sites and needs a lot of server power, but also leases out to his contacts (me) and the people they refer.
I use Slicehost for my applications and Bingodisk for big files and general static content. I also use the private part of Bingodisk for backups (via duplicity) from my laptop and application server. It's nice.
RapidVPS? I use them to host a few small sites on the cheap (starting at like $9 a month I believe). It probably wouldn't scale, but it's irreplacable for development.
Well, as of right now I am using siteground shared hosting, and have found it to be excellent for the money. Their tech support is fast and knowledgeable,and respectful (I don't expect people to KMA, however, the Godaddy people for example have proven themselves to be incompetent AND disrespectful) their interface is clear and usable, and everything has worked great so far, I feel that they provide a lot of value for the money. I am surprised to not see them mentioned here, they HAVE won a couple of awards, and are the best I have seen since 2003. Disclaimer: I mostly used Godaddy before them (yuck!) yet I have had to use a couple of others for clients, and they were all - invariably - not that great at ALL. Now, if anyone has had a bad experience with them, I would certainly like to know, as I am considering reselling for them as part of a "includes great hosting" feature in a comprehensive service package for future clients of mine.
<a href="<a href="http://www.liquidweb.com/?RID=mikestefff" rel="nofollow">http://www.liquidweb.com/?RID=mikestefff</a>">Liquidweb</a><p>Yes it's an affiliate link but they are truly amazing. Prices are great and come with full support and management. Highly recommended. Have never had an easier experience.