Ever considered a VPS? Shared hosting tend to be unreliable – which is natural, you have thousand of users on the same box running all kind of weird PHP scripts andwhatnot.

I'd recommend Slicehost. Cheap, reliable and slick.

I'd also give a recommendation for a vps. You get to learn some system stuff, but control over your database great. I used to be on mediatemple running a WP Blog and sometimes thing would bork the database, and it be days before they could restart it. With a VPS, I can make it happen instantly.

the setup is usually easy, plenty of resources online to get you going and if you don't want to play the command-line game to get certain things on there you can usually pay the hosting company themselves to 'consult' for your vps.

I'd also put my hat in for slicehost. the support is great, imo.

also: buy a vps with the most memory you can afford, you can run a bunch of sites on a 256 slice, but a few rails apps can really chew that up. (don't know if you do rails or not)

I have had nothing but bad luck with shared hosting. I have embraced VPS's, and have had zero problems so far with my slice at slicehost. I am just a happy customer - but maybe I should see if they have an affiliate program :)

edit: apparently there is https://manage.slicehost.com/customers/new?referrer=14676099...

they have a referral program.. go to account > referrals in slicemanager for your "affiliate link"

Why do you want a shared hosting company in a specific area? You can manage your hosting just fine no matter their location if it's shared.

And Dreamhost is the king of shared hosting. Fast, cheat, great customer service, employee-owned.

i guess i didn't necessarily want shared. just something cheap for our clients. and since most of our clients are in vancouver, the hope was that it was close by so hops or latency or whatever were kept to a minimum.

slightly off topic, but there doesn't appear to be way to direct msg you.

I live in the Vancouver area as well, what is the url to your site? what does your startup do?

just added my email address in there. i don't know if that means you'll be able to message me.

the company i work for isn't a startup. we do client work and we needed a reliable hosting recommendation for them.

on the side i run a small online magazine for arts and entertainment in vancouver. not exactly a startup, but we got high hopes.

sorry for the delay in following up on this.

no it doesn't look like your email allows for msg.

i am curious about your magazine.

post a link if you can

no rails, mostly php and python. slicehost is looking really nice. anyone know where the data centers are?

St. Louis