Any recommendations? I need one for a small biz (in the US), so this is a serious question. I would pay 2-3x that much for a "really excellent" platform I could build a business site on without having to be the entire sys admin.)
If you need more reliability than shared hosting can give you, then you either head into the VPS/IaaS/dedicated space (and need to do your own sys admin stuff), or you head into the GAE/Heroku/PaaS space (and need to pay a lot more).
There are always tradeoffs. :) (And no, I have no reason to recommend them other than being a happy customer. <shameless>...unless you want to use my affiliate link[2] to sign up, of course.</shameless>)