I highly recommend Slicehost. I've been amazed with their responsiveness, availability and competence.

http://slicehost.com

Those guys do look pretty good, and cheap.

I'd sign up right away, but we are using facebook for our social aspects, so we probably qualify for Joyent's free accelerator (for a year). That's a pretty tempting offer, even if I have to learn Solaris.

We've used SliceHost for over a year now. We tried one of the free Joyent Accelerators a couple of months back but whole experience for us wasn't as good as with SliceHost. Their kind of hosting is worth paying for.

Joyent is solid. We've worked with them for several years (we build the control panel they use), and they're among the smartest in the business, technically speaking. I think the price is quite nice on their Accelerators, particularly those for Facebook apps (which are free for a year). $45/mo for root-equivalent access and 512MB of memory is a very nice price. Their shared hosting accounts are in the middle of the low-to-high price continuum, but their support is very well-regarded, and they actually know how to host framework-based apps (Rails and PHP has been their focus, but I believe they accommodate Python frameworks, as well).

Another customer of ours, GridZones, also offers Solaris Zones accounts similar to Joyent's Accelerators, for a few bucks cheaper.

We've got a dedicated box with the Planet and one with Layered Tech, and both have been reliable and cheap--the Planet I've used for about five years, and Layered Tech only this year. Both seem to have competent support and reliable networks.

I can't directly answer your question I have only used shared hosting, dedicated servers, and EC2.

However, I would say that EC2 is actually not that expensive compared to the others. I've been using it for my latest project and really like it. The cost is only about $75 a month and it behaves just like my dedicated servers (but it has more RAM!). That's coffee money.

Also, you will eventually leave the "development stage" and finding a place where you can easily (and without great expense) move to a larger VH will save you money in the long run, too.

$75/Month is way more than the $20/month slicehost is offering. They do offer a lot more memory, but for the time being, I just can't justify $75/month.

I don't use a virtual host, but I can highly recommend webfaction especially for Python based applications.

WebFaction is nice for shared hosting, but the 60MB limit on RAM and the lack of root access is fairly irritating sometimes.

600GB of bandwidth is nice though, way better than the paltry 100GB slicehost offers with their minimum package.

I use Joyent, and I'm happy with them. Fast connection, great support, sufficient documentation. But, it's somewhat more expensive than other options if you just look at the technical specs.

I've been using Linode for a couple years. They're reasonably priced and I've never had any issues with them.

another vote for slicehost.

it's run by developers in response to their own frustrations with other hosting companies. full root access to the VM, flexible pricing/options, super-reliable.

we've been using them for about 3 months for staging and some back-end admin tasks, and so far it's been brilliant.

Serveraxis, another Xen host, for me.

Slicehost!

Look into a VPS. I currently use vpslink.com, but there are many to choose from.