Hi David,

Unfortunately, you can't know if a company is good until you actually host there. I haven't personally hosted at any of those sites, but I've worked with two people who had good things to say about iPowerWeb. I checked out their feature list and it appears to be the exact same feature list that was offered by the hosting company that Jenn and I both worked at.

Personally, I feel like I should advise against them solely based on the fact that they give a $50 credit for Ads with Overture instead of Google AdWords. Bastards. :)

So, I don't know personally, but I've heard iPowerWeb doesn't suck.

Thanks, Kenny! — Man, that’s some crazy feature list. I’ve been rolling my own on this stuff for so long, I don’t even know how to interpret the marketing literature these guys put out. If I’m going to have to be the one administering this, I almost wonder if we’d be better off going with something like a Panix shell account.

why don't you just run it off of chrononaut? if it's a reasonable bandwidth i don't mind the hit ...

I've been researching cheap hosts for a talk on web design for authors. Here's the list I've culled from a dozen hosting discussions on professional web designers' lists and blogs:

Highly recommended:
TextDrive

Recommended:
Webmasters.com
WestHost
WebCoreLabs
Rackspace
Media Temple
Insider Hosting
iPowerWeb
Dr2.net (*incredibly* cheap)
Flockhosting
Wired Hub
PowWeb (*very* cheap)
HostForWeb

Not recommended:
Dreamhost
Dot5Hosting

I'm with TextDrive right now, and there are two caveats to it: there's no shell access except by request (you have to tell them why you want it) and there's no FTP, only SFTP or WebDav. There is a web-based file manager.

In the past, I've used FatCow and WestHost. WestHost is all right. FatCow irritates me no end by charging setup fees for basic things like MySQL and Webalizer.

Rob — I would, but we’re in an awkward situation now where the current site is owned by somebody who’s dropped out of the club, so part of the point of the new site is to get it out of the hands of any particular member.

Stephanie — Thanks — nice to see there’s some overlap between the lists. :)

Segment Publishing is also very good. Prices are in Australian dollars, so you have to dig up the exchange rate to compare.

Web Hosting Ratings looks like the most amateur site in the world, but it lets you choose what features you need and how much you're willing to pay, and it coughs up a list of hosts which you can then research on the Web Hosting Talk forum.