I am looking for advice from forumites that are not affiliates of web hosting businesses. Need reliable web hosting with easy to set up shopping cart and will also need to accept credit cards. Wish to keep it simple and would like a website that is not much more than a shopping cart. I import handcrafts and textiles and will require hundreds of images of products ... need pages to load quick and would appreciate advice on this too. How much should I expect to pay and what hosts can you all recommend? Can someone here recommend a reliable host offering complete solution?? Thanks for your imput.

try aabox.com, they use the oscommerce platform, which I have used a lot for various customers. I just checked out their web site, expensive as hell, but these guys know oscomemrce really well and can support you on it (i think, havent used them but hear they are great)

We do oscommerce hosting as well.

I wouldnt worry about your hosting too much, its the merchant account thats going to kill you. Oscommerce has nice support for paypal IPN, which is the way to go if you dont want to pay 7% on a merchant account or $40/month plus 2%.