[carbocation]

I started off with HostGator's shared service. I started going over their limits years ago (mostly CPU, IO, memory, and execution time). The execution time was a real kicker for me - they have reapers that go around looking for processes that have been running for more than 120 seconds, and kill them. So if you have a large MySQL database that you're trying to back up, good luck... At any rate, I'm not saying their policy was unreasonable - it was just a dealbreaker for me.

At that point, I looked around for another host. I was impressed with MediaTemple's managed VPS offerings, as they had 3 levels of 'scaling' (for $50/100/150). Over the past 8 months, I've had major IO issues. Oddly, my IO issues have little correlation with my traffic patterns, so I suspect that I'm on a heavily loaded server - though they state that they see nothing but normal disk/CPU/etc utilization. That may be true, but I'm moving on.

In the end, I decided that Linode offers a level of granularity that was not matched by MediaTemple. At Linode, they expect that you may well want to separate your production server from your MySQL server from your dev server, and their backend is built with multi-server management in mind. I've set up separate MySQL and PHP servers so far, and things have been going very well. This will allow me to scale each in proportion to its needs, instead of having to scale a monolithic server instance.

For just a blog, do you want to mess around with the shell? If so, Linode or similar (SliceHost?) might be good for you. They start off small ($20/month for the cheapest), and they allow you to upgrade in small chunks.

If you don't want to deal with shell, I find HostGator to be quite reasonable, and they are extremely cheap. I still host a bunch of personal sites with them.

[sil3ntmac]

Hostgator shared accounts actually do have shell access, you just have to ask for it. Go into the live chat and ask a rep and they'll activate it for ya. They also have cheap dedicated servers called "unmanaged servers", they're kind of an unpublicized deal, its $75/mo for your own box, which I think has a 2.4 P4 and 1gb RAM, 5 IPs.

[carbocation]

I do have shell access at HostGator, but when I got it there was a $5 charge (perhaps they waive that now?). I was imprecise in my wording; when I said "shell," I really was thinking "root." Certainly, if there are things you want to do for your blog using shell, HostGator is an option.

Their $75/mo single-core DediKiddies seemed less desirable to me than an arbitrarily resizable VPS with 4 virtual cores (which MT and Linode have).

Also, it's too late for me to edit my original comment, but HostGator did not have VPS when I left them.

[aarongough]

HostGator offer VPS services now too, they were introduced only a few months ago. I haven't had any issues with the service so far! Everything has been ticking over nicely!

I've commented about Hostgator's great service a few times now, I don't want to sound like a shill. I have no affiliation with them but I have been very, very, happy with their service and support.