LipstickFace - 5:26 am on Oct 24, 2007 (gmt 0)

Hi, folks:

I've spent three happy years with my ISP (Bluehost), but there's one big fly in their ointment: they offer zactly one plan. When I start needing more bandwidth (and I will shortly), I'll hafta pick up and move. My best bet is to move now, insteada when I start maxing out my bandwidth and it becomes an emergency. I'd be grateful for some recommendations on some ISPs who you love who meet at least these requirements:

- have several levels of plans so I can move up as I need to
- run Apache
- have cPanel*
- have 24/7 phone support
- offer the usual (MySQL, Perl, PHP, etc)
- offer shell access

*The cPanel thing isn't a deal-breaker, but from what I've seen, it's the best. (Is there something better?) From helping other people out with their hosting, I've seen everything from stuff that's unwieldly all the way to "Are you pooing me?! How do you ever get anything done?!" cPanel and I get along just fine.

I take it for granted that you'll offer recommendations of hosts who're up all the time, aren't abusive, and have techs who know what they're doing, same as Bluehost.

Naturally, I've googled recommendations all over the web, and I see conflicting reviews everywhere. I wanted to find out who people here love. HostGator and 1and1 seem to both have a lotta lovers (and haters, too), so I'm trying to get the straight dope.

Thanks very much for any reallly good intel!

Binky