Back when I offered Web hosting to my clients I got most of my new hosting accounts as an addon to other services - Web design, custom coding, etc. Over the last few years I stopped offering Web hosting to customers completely, as I'm more focused on developing Web apps and have very limited time in my schedule to run a hosting business.

I know many other script developers and small software firms will use affiliate programs to offer hosting to customers and collect a commission. I'm sure HostGator rakes in quite a few new customers with their affiliate program.

What I'm wondering is how many hosting companies actually partner up with script developers and software firms to cross-promote services to their customers? I'm developing turnkey PHP scripts and every single one of my customers obviously needs a server to run it on. I'd rather work with a few Web hosts and recommend their services in exchange for the same.

The hardest part would be finding the right partner - someone who's service you are confident recommending, someone who will reciprocate appropriately and feel the same about your products, and a roughly equivelant size of customer base so the exchange is fair.

Open to your thoughts - see any other challenges, or have any ideas on how to make something like this work smoothly?