Ask HN: Web host without root access that doesnt suck?
After much looking around, I went to MediaTemple's Grid-Service, which costs more but should handle spikes without incident. However I find their servers slow, especially when querying MySQL. In one case, this page http://worditout.com/discover-word-clouds took 30 secs for PHP to build, as I can see in the html comments at the bottom of the page in the #everywhere div.
I cannot find an alternative that doesn't require dedicated or virtual serving. So assuming that my code isn't causing the speed issues, please suggest hosts that meet the following criteria:
* No root access (I don't want to worry about securing my whole OS, I'm not pro enough)
* Not for beginners (I have custom PHP code and MySQL, SSH access would be preferable)
* Won't cut off my sites in case of excess traffic, I'm prepared to pay more if necessary
* Is nippy, doesn't have to be CDN fast but can serve page with MySQL query within a few seconds
At the moment this problem is killing me, I work a lot to make my sites optimal and then the hosting let's me down..