I'm using a free host right now, but they seem to have errors somewhat often and bad customer service, so I am looking to upgrade. What are the best hosting companies in terms of reliability and customer service?
http://ion-hosting.com I'll admit that it's my hosting company, but if you check my uptime I think you'll realize that it's very reliable (literally 100% uptime). I apologize for the website, it's currently undergoing a redesign. A few sites that I host: -http://moogle-enix.net/forums -http://pantiesclan.com/forums -http://www.thectpirates.com
Well it depends on what you need and your budget but I recommend you check out HostGator, HostMonster, Bluehost, and Lunarpages.
If you are looking for the best and do not care for the cost, try hosting.com, they have real superb uptime on their solaris servers.
there is no best vendor. Only the best for your needs. I know some very good vendors on *nix platform, so they will not good for you, if you are using Windows, for example List your requirements first and stay away from overselling hosts who offering too many GB space and bandwidth with a little payment
http://www.1and1.com/ I think it's the best choice. They offer plenty of traffic and bandwith, fast support and very reliable. For a shared hosting, it's a wise option. Don't go with Hostgator is my advice - they are extremely bad!
i would have to say that Aqnshosting.com is a great company to go with... as for what maxyRO said...i would have to disagree with you on that...had an account with 1&1 over a year ago and they screwed us badly... as for hostgator, they screwed us as well but are now working to make it up to us by offering us 6months of free hosting...so they have started to redeem themselves... let me know if you want a good deal from Aqnshosting.com, i can talk to them to work out a deal on shared on hosting...
go daddy is cheap and they have good tech service most of the time for there hosting make sure you ask over the phone about any promotional products they sell because there ad writers will trick you some times and there hosting service comes with free credits for adwords but you have to use them the first day you buy your hosting account they failed to put that in the ad lol.
go daddy is cheap? why you said so? try to compare their prices to some webhost, specially 1and1. and you can say that they are not cheap. right now i'm with webhostingbuzz.com, so far the service has been good. very cheap, i'm paying less than 4bucks per month and my account has ssh access.