I need some advice choosing between hosting providers

[vivalasvegas]

I need to change hosts for one of my websites and the more I try to make an informed decision the more undecided I become.

Anyway, my website receives around 10K uniques a day and close to 30gb/month badwidth. Pages are mostly light (10-15 kb) and static.

I have found two categories of hosts:
-low priced with plans offering 50-100 gb transfer at $10 to $15/month
-much higher priced offering 30-50 gb bandwidth at $25 or more

All hosts I've been considering generally have a good reputation in terms of service provided/support. Do you think that going with one of the more expensive plans is necessary? Basically, I am trying to find out if my website, with the stats mentioned above could be considered a heavy resource user.

Thanks.

[Punith]

I would suggest you to consider best service provider than price. You can find "better than the best" host provider by considering hosting review sites.

10K unique visitors a day seems to be moderate heavy traffic.

[piatkow]

Is there a typo in your post or are the higher priced offerings really capped at lower bandwidth?

Bandwidth isn't the only thing to consider of course, look at the entire package on offer.

[vivalasvegas]

No typo -I should have mentioned that the higher priced hosts do provide higher packages (example: $50/75 gb bandwidth). Bandwidth is the main difference, the other plan specs being pretty much the same or irrelevant for me. Also, the higher priced hosts are older more reputable companies that have been in business for at least 8-9 years.

To punith: a web hosting forum is where I found these hosts.

[rocknbil]

My two cents . . . many of these services have no phone support, it's completely automated. Look for a phone number, call it. If they answer in your language and sound like they have a clue, it's probably a fairly stable choice.

[piatkow]

I'm with rocknbil on that. Also, all other things being equal, go for somebody in your own time zone. If you need to speak to somebody other than the 24 hour tech support then you won't need to call when you want to be in bed.

[ParminderChahal]

The stats you have mentioned would not be considered respurce intensive especially as yours is a static site.. Database driven sites with the same amount of traffic would use up a lot more resources.

Just thought I should mention this:

Untill 2007 I had a vbulletin forum hosted on shared hosting and when I moved that forum to a dedicated box it was getting 15k unique visitors per day and hosting guys never asked me to upgrade or anything... I moved to a dedicated because I didint want their hourly e-mail restrictions. So your site will not be considered too big for shared hosting is what my opinion is :)

[edited by: phranque at 10:43 am (utc) on Dec. 13, 2009]
[edit reason] hosting specifics [/edit]