I've always been into shared hosting, and generally understood the issues that came with it. Lately I've been bit by the VPS bug (need root access to run some calc. software) and things have been great, except for my first sign-up experience.

I don't want to name the host, but coming from shared hosting I was used to the low prices and didn't really realize you get what you pay for. I ended up with a $20/m server that allegedly came with 512 mb of memory and 500 gb of bandwidth. Made sense to me. Boy was I wrong! Every other day my processes would crash and the calc. software I needed to install wouldn't even start up (it's java based). I said OK no big deal let's keep trying. A week later my server was magically "deleted" and there were no "backups". I ended up running out of there quick, didn't even bother asking for a refund. Luckily I didn't transfer anything important onto the server yet.

So in 6 years of dealing with hosting and websites, I have to say that was my worst expereince.

I ended up with a managed package from zone.net. It has less resources and bandwidth than the other VPS at a higher cost, but the service I get is top-notch and my java app actually RUNS on this VPS!