Most are at SurpassHosting.com Planning to get another for proxies. I also have a couple of smaller hosting accounts bought from DP.
I have never considered (and never will) small players in the hosting market. Even if I need a basic package, I would rather purchase a multi-domain hosting and use their reputation as a company as a personal backup. I mostly purchase from 1and1, godady, and mydomain, even though I previously had issues with each of the above mentioned, I would not go elsewhere. You need to remember that trusting a serious website to a reputable company is important.
I don't believe there's such a thing as a best host. It's horses for courses. For some sites I need 24 hour telephone support - very few hosts offer that. For other sites it may be Windows hosting (asp). Or located in a specific country (to show Google a geo-specific IP). Data protection laws in the UK means that one of my sites HAS to be hosted in the UK as some of the data can't be allowed to be held by entities outside. What's your project and what exactly are you trying to find out?
Dedicared server with ISPrime. Considering I get half million unique visitors a month, I need real deal hosting. Would never host with wannabies.
I don't know if it's the best deal, but it was by far the easiest deal I found. I created a free site first at Synthasite. Once I got it laid out how I wanted it, I purchased my domain from them directly. $19.95 for the domain and one year's hosting. Works for me. The link to it is in my profile if you wanna see.
My websites are hosted at hostgator and bluehost. Well, no problem so far but bluehost seems faster than hostgator.