I use mediatemple. My setup is the mediatemple for client projects and a linode vps for my own personal playground I like them because they are like an entry

I use mediatemple. My setup is the mediatemple for client projects and a linode vps for my own personal playground I like them because they are like an entry level honda to, for comparison, say the Rolls Royce of one of the more expensive Rackspace plans. I don't know if anyone else has used rackspace but I had a client who did once. You pay them something like $2000 - $4000 a month but everytime you call them you instantly get a person on the phone that can get you to someone who can help you fix your problem. With mediatemple you have to deal with a machine answering and wait 5 or 10 minutes but you only pay $200 for the whole year. And the service and knowledge of the support people is comparable. They also have a great control panel with all of the standard dns configuration, 1 click app installation, administrative stuff. Long story short they have plenty of things that automate the tedious setup process of building a site and pretty good customer service. Though I would agree for the more tech savvy go for the free Amazon ec2 instance and scale up from there or invest in a vps with linode or slicehost. If you have any specific questions feel free to ask. I know my answer was really general