Looking for a stable host that offers Magento-commerce software.
New Business
Located in United States.
Maybe 200 visitors a day?
60-70 Products max

Looking for a better price than $40 a month.
I imagine these specs are probably the most accurate to our needs:
http://www.inmotionhosting.com/vps_hosting.html

Can anyone else give me a proper analysis of our needs?
Is VPS necessary?

Is VPS necessary?

AFAIK no, shared hosting should do, but it's good to find a host that actually specializes in hosting Magento. I've heard that it can be heavy on the server.

I agree with Dan. Moreover Magento project has own web hosting forums where you will be able to get the suggestion regarding web hosting services

I have seen people hosting Magento on HostGator and HostMonster with just as many products and visitors per day without any issues.

I can personally recommend HelpingHandHost and SimpleHelix. But magento even runs okay on their personal site hosting which costs $5.60 month.

I second simplehelix as this company is optimized for running Magento on their servers.
And their semi-dedicated VPS hosting helps you much to meet your need, the OP.

I know that a2hosting company has supported Magento on their servers.
Their reputation is high and this company provides a wide range of hosting services and their VPSs cost little.

Magento have at least two lists of hosts on their on site:

http://www.magentocommerce.com/partn...ting-partners/
http://www.magentocommerce.com/wiki/...to-web-hosting

This is really hard to find outstanding hosting but some below points could make difference.
1) Reliability
2) Instant support
3) cheaper than others but service is equivalent to others
4) Server Response

I think bluehost and hostgator are also reliable in terms of services.

Originally Posted by itbuzz

I think bluehost and hostgator are also reliable in terms of services.

What does it mean? How that is possible to be realible in terms of services for web hosting company? Can you please explain a bit?

Most of the reputed web hosting providers offer Magento on their Linux web hosting packages.Magento works well on all the cPanel Servers and you can consider any of cpanel hosting plans to host Magento CMS.Just make sure that the shared accounts are created on high performance servers.Magento is gaining popularity at a fast pace hence most of the web hosting providers have started offering web hosting packages suitable for Magento hosting.

Magento is free. And this project has own forums where I deem you can find more information

in fact,some old hosting in unite states is great,like bluehost,hostgator,but i want to recommend you some new hosting is perfect,too.

Originally Posted by cindyfowler

in fact,some old hosting in unite states is great,like bluehost,hostgator,but i want to recommend you some new hosting is perfect,too.

So what is your recommendation I wonder? To go with old or new web hosting?

Bluehost uses SimpleScripts which installs it onto the server extremely fast, I used it for a while on one of my sites. Worked fine!

Originally Posted by cindyfowler

This is really hard to find outstanding hosting but some below points could make difference.
1) Reliability
2) Instant support
3) cheaper than others but service is equivalent to others
4) Server Response

Youp, this is true, and I think that shared hosting has these essentials with reasonable prices too.

There is web hosting section on the magentocomerce forums. I suppose you can get web hosting suggestion from there. I suppose that will be the best way

I think if web host which can handle php/Mysql requirements of this web application you can use that. But some web hosting companies use that for the marketing goals saying their servers are designed for this web application only

Originally Posted by ldcdc

AFAIK no, shared hosting should do, but it's good to find a host that actually specializes in hosting Magento. I've heard that it can be heavy on the server.

Originally Posted by janestewart

But magento even runs okay on their personal site hosting which costs $5.60 month.

Here's the thing... one of the crucial ways to get Magento running well is to have it take advantage of the memcached session handler instead of running its sessions in MySQL.

Since memcached doesn't provide any sort of authentication mechanism, you need your own secure access to it, and that means it's not feasible to run it on a shared hosting service.

So ideally, yes you need a VPS or dedicated server which will give you this ability to make use of memcached in a secure manner.

Originally Posted by NewBreed

Looking for a better price than $40 a month.

But, the $40/month budget mentioned here isn't enough to get a powerful enough VPS or dedicated server of course...

Given this budget the only option is a shared hosting service - but you need to expect to pay a fair price for it since as others already mentioned, Magento is one of the more resource demanding ecommerce scripts out there (it's also one of the most powerful).

It would be wise to also consider your options in terms of upgrade path from shared to vps/dedicated. For example, it might make life easier for you to go with a provider offering all of these options - but then you can probably get help moving to any new provider at a later date... my point is only that you should consider this issue and the impact it may have on your future growth.