Please suggest a host - Feel very overwhelmed.

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This web hosting review was started by progtick on 2010-02-26 17:30:53:

I’ve been researching for a week. I do not know if this is supposed to take this long.

Please bear with my ramble. I want to make sure I do not miss any point.

I will need to host multiple websites. Should I manage them from same account or sign up different accounts? Some of these will be huge, while some of these would be medium traffic. This is also important from MSSQL Server point of view. Although databases would be different for different websites, they would all be sharing the same instance of SQL Server though.

My websites are more likely to get surges of traffic based on their nature.

I would need a host that is quite attractive with all kinds of plans - shared, VPS and dedicated and further up, so I do not have to worry when it comes to scaling up. I would not like my website to go down for a couple of days, because I am changing host or something.

I would need MSSQL Server, I was going to go ahead with installing MSSQL Express on my VPS, but some of you suggested I might be very well able to get MSSQL Server, so I should look harder. There is also this thought floating around randomly that MSSQL Server on VPS is a bad idea, because it hogs memory, while some of you also mention SQL Server Express is not so much of a problem.

Also, I would like services like monitoring etc. Basically, a very helpful hosting staff which does not resort to "please pay me $75 per hour if you want me to look into it".

I am willing to pay from $30-$50 per month to start with, and I am willing to go up as my needs increase.

I feel extremely overwhelmed with all the choices, and none of the choices I have come across meet all these needs. If something does, then I read a bad review on it online haha.

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