I use Dreamhost, cos all my stuff is non-mission-critical (that said, I think I've had maybe 2 long-term outages with them)

I have used Gazzin's(http://www.gazzin.com/) Reseller account in the past and it worked without any issues. However, the interface was clunky and not your ideal Web 2.0 but this was back in 2003.

Currently, I am using Dreamhost and as it has been mentioned before it does have outages but my blog and other simple sites do not have a lot of traffic to deal with so it is ok for the time being.

For any sort of professional deployment, I am using slicehost's VPS. Linode is also a good one. However, with slicehost I built the entire server myself so it gives you a fine grained control which I miss with dreamhost.

I gave up on shared hosting a couple of years ago. Switched to a VPS and couldn't be happier.

* better security (hundreds of random customers can't write a PHP script to read my db config settings)

* better uptime (if one of those hundreds (thousands?) of websites gets slammed with traffic, my sites don't go down.)

* i can run as many websites as I want - same price

* it's handy to use ssh/rsync as a dropbox for distributing large files

* I get my own IP address, so if one of those hundred other customers sends spam or is hacked, my IP address isn't blacklisted.

1 - dreamhost for blogs and random stuff to help out friends.

2 - dedicated server managed by a small hosting company in a solid IDC for my money focused projects. Since I bought the server 4 years ago, I'll stick with it until it dies. Then maybe rent from a linode or slicehost, etc...

For trial projects, I host my own projects within my own network so that I have extremely fast speeds. When I publish them for beta-testing, I use kvchosting.com - they offer unlimited webspace and bandwidth for 2.99/month if you get the two year package.

Sorry, I did not answer your question completely. I would only go for a hosting site that gives me complete SSH access to my account.