I'm concerned about finding a cheap hosting provider that can manage their servers well. Currently, hostgator has started to have unexplained downtimes on my monitoring service at night and a couple of times during the day. Nothing posted in their planned maintenance threads. I'm assuming that their natural cycle is to put new customers on a server until it generates complaints and manage from there...if it doesn't stablize I need to find a new host.

So is anyone using a cheap hosting provider that is consistent and snappy if properly configured w caching? Or anyone been through this with hostgator, do they eventually stabilize? Otherwise I am going to have to do an RFQ for hosting services. sigh.

I tend to believe you get what you pay for with hosting and you have to define what you mean by cheap. I host with Westhost.com and are very happy with them.

thanks j,
Currently, I pay out of pocket for work websites, so cheap is under 10 bucks. I'll check out westhost.

I'd been happy with hostgator but I simply cannot have 8 hours of downtime in a month 2+ hours each time.

However, I may just have to plan to go through the purchasing process and pay for dedicated or cloud hosting somewhere as soon as I have time to wade through that...otherwise I feel like I'm just gambling because uptimes aren't posted anywhere.

I agree with juggledad -- you get what you pay for. I use Dreamhost and I am fairly happy with support and services.

I have honestly been extremely satisfied with Downtownhost. Their extremely fast support (usually I get an email response in less than 10 minutes, 24/7) has surpassed all my expectations.

Very rarely do my sites go down for any length of time. I have been with them for more than 2 years now and could not be happier.

Check out Downtownhost

(Affiliate link, thanks)

They usually have online coupon codes going around so Google for them and you might save some money too.

Thanks folks. Looking today...

FYI: my site's and other sites on the same server have been down for 19 hours. As such, I would advise against anyone using hostgator because they seem incompetent/incapable of monitoring or fixing things unless being hounded. I don't know where their servers are hosted but they tell me the site is ok despite my monitoring services saying otherwise and the site being inaccessible to me and others trying to access it.

Utter nightmare.