dbvt.com has lived on a WebHost4Life shared server for a couple of years now. I've been using the $19.95 a month Premium Plan and all-in-all I've had a good experience. A few unpleasant incidents with tech support newbs until the 1st string support guys showed up, but I have always felt that everyone at WH4L tries to provide a quality service. Stuff happens, so at $19.95 a month you can't expect much more than that. Plus no one offers what WH4L does for the price.
WebHost4Life recently began offering Virtual Private Server hosting starting at $59.95 a month, and like their shared hosting plan, it's tough to get as much virtual server elsewhere compared to what WH4L is offering for the price.
We'll see if I'm tempting fate going this route. It's not a done deal yet. The VPS account requires a faxed form to accompany the online order form, which is weird, but I'll comply. Mine is filled out and ready to fax. But I didn't fax it yet because my online registration form is still on hold. You see, WH4L was advertising shared hosting account upgrade discounts to VPS of 75% for the first three months. I was at the point of entering my credit card info and didn't see my 75% discount.
WebHost4Life, dudes, if you're going to send out individual notices to customers announcing site upgrade specials with an embedded link to the sign-up form, then pass a simple querystring value or add some intelligence to the sign-up form to tell the customer that, yeah, there really is a discount.
Also, if you're going to list a signup_support email address as a help and contact address for people trying to buy your service, then answer the email. The question I sent at noon today has yet to be answered. It's like someone walks into your store to make a purchase and you can't take your hand out of your bag of Doritos in the back office long enough to say hello, which is all you need to do to close the sale.
Maybe I'm waiting for the 1st string sales guys to show up. I'll let you know how it goes.
[Update: 11:10 PM Friday night. I just finished an online chat session with Candice at WH4L who told me that the 75% discount ended 2/1/2007. D'oh! There wasn't any expiration date on the emails, but she was right when she pointed me to the promotion dates listed on the bottom of the VPS plans description page. Chat is cool, and 2 points for WebHost4Life! I'll re-initiate sign-up procedures tomorrow. If dbvt.com suddenly goes down for a while, you'll know why. :-) ]