In need of good web hosting, and after reading 10 pages of this forum (with 456 to go), I decided to just ask.

I have some products I want to sell via the net and I also want to break free of eBay's leash.

I want a web host provider that can:

-Provide me with a shopping cart/checkout/payment service

-Allow me to upload my html site, then add the cart/checkout process (is this painful?). I have created my own site with an html editor that keeps the html coding simple, therefore making it more compatable with browsers. I don't want to be forced to use a pre-designed template.

-Give me a 24 emergency number (cell/pager) in case of problems (webwebhost doesn't seem to have this). Emailing for help seems lousy - a site could be down for who knows how long before hearing a reply.

-Affordable hosting (would be nice)

-Search engine friendly (godaddy certainly isn't)

Are my hosting desires unrealistic? Comments appreciated.

Thanks,

gamerdude

What's your monthly budget?

I would think $20 -$40 monthly would be right. I'm considering using Yahoo stores, as they seem to do everything and have a number for tech support (but who knows how long the wait time on hold from Thailand is).

I only do low-volume selling, not too much every month. Maybe 30,000B a month.

I seriously recommend forgetting about your phone support idea. I PMd you the site of a very reliable company who have maximum 15 minute reponse times on their helpdesk (website so email problems dont matter) 24 hours a day for your budget. They are also all fully network and os qualified. US servers.

Towards the $40 end you can rent a virtual private server. We got one from Futurehosting.biz maybe a year ago and it is so much more stable and headache-free than shared hosting. We have our own dedicated allocation of RAM and processor and site availability has never been better. The helpdesk is excellent, we got a 'managed' VPS so they handle technical set up we need, and they do free security hardening.

Downside is you need to learn another control panel to manage the server, so there's a bit to learn but well worth it.