Looking for a host... again
 

Hi all,

Since the last time I was here, I had switched over to Hostgator from inmotion (inmotion had sql problems ALL the time, and wouldn't allow for more connections) for my small forum, and was running decent with them for months. Lately, they have become quite slow, and it bothers me that they don't really have any step up plans. So, I am looking for hosting that will speed up my forum and has plans to step up to as we grow.

I don't think I need a VPS or Dedicated yet, as we are still pretty small, but I could be wrong.

Here are our stats right now:

About 100 members (although since our site focuses on a summer thing, we expect that to grow a lot in the next few months.)

At most now, we get about 50 online users at a time, not counting guests and crawlers.

We use Wordpress for our front page.

We have a couple of mods, but we are certainly not mod heavy.

We would VERY much like to add chat capabilities, whether it's connected to the front page, or the forum. Hostgator doesn't allow that.

So far this month, there has been about 11gb bandwidth, and only 2gb disk space. Again, we expect that to get bigger soon, at least the bandwidth.

So what does everyone suggest? I am in the U.S. if that makes any difference.

I have looked at URLJet, Knownhost, MediaLayer, and was going to look at GlobalGold, but was reading that if I do business in the U.S., I should be hosted by a U.S. company.

Do I need a VPS, or should I still be good on a shared plan... and if so, can you recommend a good fast company for shared with a choice to upgrade to a VPS when needed?

My budget? Well $0 would be good LOLOL... I know I know... I would like to stay anywhere between $15-$30 a month if possible. I am open to a little higher if I have to.

Thanks again all! You have all been so great.