No doubt powerdnn is the cream of the crop. I have experience with them because a web design firm I use to work for used them for their clients. They do provide excellent support, which is reflected in the price.

Thanks for your input. The first account I setup with 3essentials.com went fairly smoothly on a shared hosting account they no longer offer. They changed everything and require a separate purchase of a mailbox for DNN accounts. The SMTP test on the DNN install has not worked for 1 week now and that means none of my forms work. I have spent more time on chat support that it has taken me to build the site with a custom made DNN skin. This time around 3essentials has been absolutely horrible! The email/smtp problem at the time of this writing, has not been resolved. I'm stuck with an impatient client.

Hopefully this will help someone when deciding whom they should choose...

Hey Rodney, I hope you get this:

 I was looking for a hosting provider. I'm a happy WinHost customer, but their speed (web site loading, etc.) isn't the best, but I know I'm getting what I paid for with a shared provider like this.

 I am looking for a better solution to host a business instance of DNN for a client. I was looking at Managed.com, but at $100 / mo, it's very pricey.

 I went over to windowsazure.com and couldn't quite figure out what plan to choose for DNN. What do you use? Are you using a dedicated VM?

 That's one of the things I've thought about: having my own VM and managing it myself, but hosting it with a provider. The thing is, I'm not sure how licensing of the O/S works with something like Azure and whether you can completely configure the O/S (presuming one is included) with Azure.

THe azure hosting plans don't indicate whether you have access to MS SQL or not. Can you shed any light on what you use with azure.com? ANd whether you'd recommend it for a business hosting plan vs. something like WinHost? (The site I'm doing isn't a big one. But I'm concerned that the slow page laod times of a shared provider would hinder SEO crawling as well as negatively affect customer experience. (I use WinHost for my own site. And as a user, I get frustrated with how slow it takes to load for the first time. But i'm not that concerned because I'm just a small independent).

 

Anyways, just looking to see if I can find a balanced provider that provides better performance and lower density shared plans, vs. some sort of dedicated hosting. I know dedicated hosting will cost more. But it's hard to make a decision by looking at a web page. I'm looking for real world recommendations from users rather than from sales people of these sites who always say how great they are.

 Sorry for the lengthy post. Just sharing my thoughts and hoping you might have some ideas or recommendations.