Switching PHP hosting. Any good recommendations?

I am looking to switch host for a few sites (mix of .ie and .com), currently hosted with Irish provider.
Have had some security issues as well as badly configured servers and am thinking of hosting outside Ireland as I just get the feeling there is not one stand out company in Ireland.

Can anyone give their experiences with their providers? I would prefer personal responses, not reps from Irish hosting companies trying to sell packages.

The things that I find necessary are .htaccess access to tweak URL for nice URL, a good webmail and the ability to setup redirects etc to send http://www.domain.com to http://domain.com etc. Essentially fine level access.

Good stats are a must also. Initially on shared servers, with a view to upgrading to dedicated in near future

Digiweb* are offering a virtual server at €9.99 a month at the moment.

That will give you to access to change anything you want.

Link:
[broken link removed]


* No connection except as a customer

We have switched Askaboutmoney recently to also trading as Global Gold

They are a normal Hosting Company but they have around 4 people specialising in vBulletin support which is why we chose them in particular.

I don't have the background to assess them technically, but their service has been excellent.

1) They switched from Hosting 365 seamlessly
2) They have been very proactive in their support - Upgrading the vBulletin. Checking reported problems. Putting up plug-ins,etc.

3)They did various things of their own initative which I had not thought of e.g. making sure we were registered as an Irish site with Google.

They call me on my mobile from time to time to see if everything is ok, which is a new experience for me in terms of IT Support.

It depends on what you need. Most hosts are 'infrastructure' providers. What you are running, as such, is beyond the providers remit of care. If you want to run things yourself, a VPS or dedicated server is a great option. If you want most things 'looked after' then look for a specific managed service provider. Brendan listed one of the best out there for vbulletin hosting, you can also find niche specialists that will provide fully managed shared hosting environments (like rackspace sites / mosso) and hosted blogs, etc.