This has been asked a squillion times, but what's good and inexpensive by way of hosting these days? If I was to set up a social network type site with a few hundred members - maybe 10 to 20 online at any one time. Huge disk space not needed.

I've not found anywhere that gives better support than NetHosted, but they're not the cheapest.

For inexpensive with plenty of features, space, and unlimited bandwidth, HostMedia.

If disk space is really unimportant, they do a single site 100MB space package for a £1 setup fee, but otherwise it's starting at £24/yr for 5GB+ space. (But search for cfhour podcast and there's a discount code that may or not still give 50% off every year.)

Dealing with HostMedia support can be frustrating - sometimes stuff stops working (probably because they've fiddled) and their first line support don't read messages properly and can give spurious explanations of fixes - but they're probably not the worst I've dealt with, and I think they are the cheapest.

That's all assuming you're after simple shared hosting, which should be fine for regular link sharing and casual commenting - I'd expect an average much lower than a request per second per user, so upto 20 online users wouldn't be much for a decent server - but if there's heavy chatting and media uploading then performance could be more impacted by how many other customers the host has put on the same server.

turtledesign.com has hosted my stuff for ~20 years, pretty much flawlessly. The proprietor Stefan Nesbitt is an all around class act and will take care of you. `nuff said.

Thanks both. 

I'm hoping I don't have to do anything. I belong to a writers' forum which over the course of 10 years had built up a lively community. It hangs off a commercial writers' organisation which offers manuscript reviews various levels of editing, courses, all the usual editorial stuff. They use part of the forum commercially running courses in closed groups, but the social part is free. Unfortunately they based it on SocialGo software which may have all the features they want but appears to have been coded using the infinite monkeys with infinite keyboards methodology. It falls over, offers a different bespoke editor wherever you need to enter text, falls over, has several bits that simply don't work, and falls over regularly. So they're going to do a major replatform exercise - to what I have no idea.

The site owner has spotted an opportunity to make more cash. He is converting his business model to a "club" with courses, festivals, editorial facilities, literary agent hook-ups etc. all offered at big discounts to members. The downside is that the club comes at £30 per month. Oh, and it offers "free" access to his new online community. He clearly hopes that his old forum patrons will simply pay him to get through the pay wall. Apparently he is talking about "not turning out the lights" on the old forum, but closing it to new members - which sounds like a death knell to me.

So at the moment I'm just looking into things. If he keeps the forum running and allows new members, then that may work. On the other hand I really can't see him funding a free rival to his hoped for money-spinner, or rushing to help if it falls over. If he allows free access to his new forum that might be an option. At the moment it doesn't look hopeful.

I'm with BP regarding Nethosted. Their support is unrivalled (and I'm with a bunch of hosts). Not dear, either.

I have moved to 20i, can't fault the support and service.