At present i'm using several hosts and dedicated servers.

http://www.steadfast.net - US based hosting
http://www.cove.com.au - AU based hosting
http://www.kimsufi.co.uk - Dedicated server running Nginx, PHP and MySQL
http://www.pacificrack.com - Dedicated server running Litespeed, PHP, MySQL and cPanel

For high quality hosting (datacenter in Australia) I use Netlogistics. Their support is superb, and super quick 24 hours a day at any time. Two years ago today (on New Year's Day 2008) I registered a domain name and set up hosting, and it was all sorted by a human technician within about 1 hour - on a public holiday! I currently have two clients on their standard plans as well as a 10 domain reseller plan with just a couple domains on it right now.

HOWEVER I'm on the lookout for a cheap and nasty (but not too nasty) standard account hosted in the USA, basically to use for some domains i'm developing "mini sites" for, really just domain parking. Basically want dirt cheap as i'm just starting out with this, no hassles and be able to host a few domains on one account.

So far i've narrowed it down to Fatcow, Supergreen Hosting, Dreamhost, Greengeeks.com or ipage.com , having excludes justpages, hostmonster and a few others that have lots of bad reviews.

Has anyone got any thoughts on these?

Thanks
Matt

1 word
HostGator
Perfect for MiniSites
I use them for all of mine (I am the MiniSite KING)

I have a standard and a reseller account with hostgator - and other than catching them out in a bare faced lie so they could charge me extra for a service, I have been happy and have had no major issues with them at all. Support is half decent and I have had near perfect uptime with them.

I have had some very bad hosting experiences and hostgator has been the best of the bunch so far and I trust them to do the right thing by my clients (on my reseller) as far as security and service go.

Thanks for the advice.

I've ended up putting them on a "forgotten" hosting account I signed up with someone called freehostia.com a while ago (it's their lowest level paid account which I think I paid like $50 for a year for a couple months ago). Completely forgot I had it until I was about to sign up with host gator. My very limited experience of them says they are ok, no hassles but a little slow in site speed.

aHugeList - would you mind mentioning who you had bad experiences with so we can be sure to avoid?

Matt

Sure thing
Started out with yahoo - AGHHHH they lost all my files TWICE in the first year, and once in the second year. This time when they found them they deleted them for adult content (it was an erotic story) closed my account and my yahoo ID (no contact - they just did it) and took me 3 months to get my domain name back - thank goodness the company they resell for gave it back to me in the end. The adult content was my fault - their incompetence and poor communication was theirs! (plus I didn't know at the time they charge way too much)

Tried a new start up company recommended by a friend (cant remember the name blue-something???) that vanished three months in with my $.

Next I went with servage for a normal account. Cheap and ok for first year - then three server wide hacks, poor support and huge down time since then. I don't have any sites there now but they ended up giving me so much credit for their f-ups that Im still paid until mid 2010 lol - its a shame - they COULD be good but prefer to lie than fix things.

Hostmonster
Paid and signed up for a normal account but they wanted me to jump through so many hoops to confirm my identity (overseas phone calls, faxes, heaps of ID that Im not happy handing over) I canceled without using them - just too much drama for a simple hosting account.

Namecheap - I love them as a registrar but they don't (or didnt then) have cpanel - I found their user interface strange so I canceled

Serverwow - purchased a master reseller account. Paid, set up. A week later I went to log in and my account was gone, so is serverwow, so is my money!

Dreamhost - seems ok, but support was very very slow with some set up questions. Then I just forgot I had signed up with them and I didn't get around to using the account so I canceled.

I am now using hostgator as I stated - other than being lied to I have found them the best so far.

I have this month set up a couple of reseller accounts with a new host.
Accounts only up a week when they decided to shift us all to a new server after banning updates for 3 days (not a good start) If they improve or get worse I'll add my experiences with them later - Id like to give them more than a week before I declare them crap lol

Thanks. That was a very useful overview of who to avoid.