There are other advantages to Windows hosting, but some of them will cost you slightly more. For example, I am a big fan of remote desktop, which is provided by a lot of providers for a small fee on Windows-based hosting plans.
In general, though, if you want basic hosting for almost anything you want to do, Linux is cheap, easy, and probably your best bet.
Although I am sure you have plenty of options by now, some of my friends have been satisfied by www.oneandone.com
Oh yeah, so people have mentioned 1 and 1.
I’m just saying from personal experience, that’s a good way to go if you’re starting out.
1 and 1 is cheap, but if you ever need service or any communication with them, good luck. Their phone support is one of the foreign tech centers, and I havent been very happy with their email service either.
Exactly. That’s why I love Duport Online. Their support is excellent. They reply extremely quickly and will actually work with you to solve problems.
I would Suggest Brinkster. They host our website (http://www.team1676.com/) and do a great job and have a few different options based on your needs. They also provide Windows Server or Red Hat Linux server based on your choice. Note: If you wish to run ASP .NET use Windows; if you plan to use PHP or anything else I suggest that you use Linux. It is a known and better web-server!
I use 1and1 for our team site. I’ve seen the bad reviews and I’ve experienced problems but hey their cheap. Just to buy a domain is just $6/yo. Buying a shared server costs about $70/yo. That’s why I stick with them. They’re was this one time I was so pissed with them. My site was down for hours at a time. It would go up for a day and then would go back down. I called costumer support and it took almost an hour to talk to somebody and when I did they just gave me an ETA. For a couple of months now my site has been running smoothly and I’m starting to gradually like them again.
I have a site hosted with Exabytes, too. I don’t recommend them for the same reason. They don’t have phone support at all, a fact which I was willling to accept at the time until I realized that their e-mail support was in Malaysia. I had to reply to one problem five times to get an answer that actually fit the question.