I use Digital Ocean now and used Linode for a long time before that, both are great.
But, before I knew how to manage my own server, I used https://dathorn.com/. They were the absolute greatest shared host that I have ever used. The guy running it is extremely responsive, and I never had any issues.
If you're looking for shared hosting, I can't recommend them enough. I'm not affiliated, I just hope they never gets put under by big hosting companies.
You might be right, but I'd be careful recommending any shared hosting that you aren't currently using!
I 'upgraded' to using VPS', mostly Digital Ocean and Hetzner a few years ago. But before that I relied on shared hosting. I constantly experienced the following:
- use shared hosting provider <x> because they're affordable and support is great.
- lots of people start using <x>
- support degrades, uptime is affected, and the whole thing goes to shit.
- check various subreddits and forums to figure out what the current 'good' host is.
- go through the trouble of moving my sites (and, early on, DNS) to the new great solution.
- rinse, repeat.
My experience with VPS providers has been less unstable. I mostly moved from DO to Hetzner because the latter is cheaper and still good enough for my use-cases. But the time I've been with DO is multiples of how long I stuck with a shared hosting provider until they went to shit.
(I think HostGator was the last straw for me, iirc)
To me, Dreamhost stands out as the sole player that has (mostly) avoided becoming scummy when it comes to shared, managed hosting services. Probably because they're independent and employee-owned.
I was a happy customer for ~2 decades. Only recently left because I simply have no need for their services anymore (and frankly, haven't for years) due to having an assortment of VPS and dedicated server instances running around the globe at any given point in time nowadays.
A respectful VPS provider is also hard to find. Sometimes I get most of the way through the sales funnel only to find out that the ToS includes selling my personal information to third parties.
In general I found that the more third-party domains linked to from a provider's site, the higher the chance they're up to some kind of disrespectful behaviour.
I mean sure, I don't look back too fondly on the days of $0.99/mo 128MB OpenVZ plans, which is where I feel this distaste comes from. Digital Ocean, Vultr, and Linode have been way more solid for me and they keep each other honest in terms of pricing.
I'm curious if any of those three are guilty of selling personal data.
But, before I knew how to manage my own server, I used https://dathorn.com/. They were the absolute greatest shared host that I have ever used. The guy running it is extremely responsive, and I never had any issues.
If you're looking for shared hosting, I can't recommend them enough. I'm not affiliated, I just hope they never gets put under by big hosting companies.