The thing about web hosting is that it's undervalued by people due to price competition. A lot of people think it's reasonable to pay $5 for a hosting account and they expect everything to work perfectly and get support if they can't figure something out. Well if they spend one hour of staff time a year helping you then the profit margin is essentially shot. That's why most cheapo shared hosts just offer crap service. It's not worth it to even try.
That's why the momentum is definitely the direction of hosted services for most things people need rather than direct web hosting. If you want to host your own website you should either A) pay a few hundred a month for a managed host, or B) learn to be your own sysadmin (which frankly is not nearly as hard as it used to be).
That's why the momentum is definitely the direction of hosted services for most things people need rather than direct web hosting. If you want to host your own website you should either A) pay a few hundred a month for a managed host, or B) learn to be your own sysadmin (which frankly is not nearly as hard as it used to be).