I am not in the web hosting industry (merely an end-user here), but reading some related blogs help me to get an understanding on what’s going on with this hosting business. Here is a partial-list of blogs that I read, but do note that this is not a “definite list”, and will certainly grow/shrink over time.

Disaster happens — even to web hosting companies. You get operating system/software issues, server hardware issues, network glitches and data centre issues and even interrupted electricity that plague your hosting business. Worse, when they all come one after another within a short time span. It is what happened to DreamHost last month, and they are still in the process of picking up the pieces. Many web sites were affected, and outrages were everywhere around the blogosphere.

BlueHost seems to be quite a reputable web hosting company. They are young (less than 3 years old). Their banners can be seen almost everywhere. 15Gb storage + 400Gb bandwidth for less than 7 bucks a month. Secure Shell is enabled (but probably jailed). Great service reviews, and even the sucks test did not bring up anything too disturbing. Moreover, their CEO Matt Heaton has a blog.