My selection for best power host goes to Media Temple, the same folks who run hosting for ABC, NBC, Adobe, Sony, Warner Brothers, etc.
As I’ve mentioned multiple times, I make no money sending people to Media Temple, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night sending you anywhere else if this is the type of hosting that you need. Their customer service is fine. They aren’t the easiest host to use. But they are what they are. When push comes to shove, all that matters is performance, availability and power. If you have stars in your eyes and are ready to go big, go to Media Temple.
I run some 20 sites on the same Media Temple account for $20 per month. The sites are fast, always up and deliver what Media Temple promises–world class hosting.
You can run sites on Media Temple by designing them yourself and using an FTP account to upload them to the server, or you can one-click install Wordpress, Drupal or ZenCart.
Another Good Choice:
If VPS or dedicated hosting is more your style, for basically the same price as Media Temple, you can choose Ultrahosting.
Besides being the clear leader in VPS/dedicated hosting, the great thing about Ultrahosting is their flexibility and customer service. You can start off with the $19 per month VPS package and continue to move your way on up, gradually, as your web site’s needs increase. They are easy to use, with cPanel, and offer a lot of great extras, like helping you transfer your site and keeping backups for you. If Media Temple seems a little daunting to you, try Ultrahosting. You really can’t go wrong there.
There are other choices out there, but the only other one I feel comfortable recommending is GoDaddy’s beta grid service or their VPS/dedicated hosting. I’m using their grid service on a couple of my sites and it does fine. The thing with choosing GoDaddy for grid service at this point is that they are still in beta and it requires a little bit of a leap of faith. Right now, they are only $4.99 per month, which is tremendous, but you can only put one site there. If that’s all you need, go for it. You can’t beat $4.99 per month for grid service. When they leave beta stage, they have assured me that you will be able to host multiple sites on the same account, though of course the price will increase. They are planning on that price being $19.99 per month, basically the same as Media Temple.
I cannot really recommend GoDaddy’s VPS/dedicated service because I haven’t tried it (and honestly don’t plan to). I would assume that it is solid, as are all of GoDaddy’s products
I wouldn’t blame you at all for taking a small roll of the dice and picking GoDaddy.
