I just finished moving all of my sites off of Dreamhost and onto HostGator after a short run with GoDaddy. What follows is a review of each. The best host for the dollar by far is HostGator.
All three hosts offer similar plans as far as bandwidth and disk space is concerned. I wanted to outline the biggest downfalls of each host. The plans I tried were around $15, with the exception of DreamHost and were all Linux servers. I have used all three hosts in the last month.
GoDaddy
GoDaddy is also a registrar, so it may appear at first that this would be a good host to sign up through. However, after signing up, I discovered a few short comings that I could not work with doing the type of hosting I was doing.
There was no SSH access allowed. This made it somewhat difficult to install and run some php applications such as Gallery2.
The email accounts were limited to 25mb per domain...they do not share the alloted disk space (for add on domains, not the primary domain which only has 10mb). GoDaddy had unlimited forwarding. To get more space, you have to purchase an additional email package.
GoDaddy limits you to 6 ftp accounts.
The interfaces (yes, you have to use multiple interfaces) used to manage your hosting account were cumbersome and logged me out frequently.
The statistics were limited and for the primary domain only. You could purchase more detailed statistics.
There was no 800 number for support, but the email support was decent.
Dreamhost
See my next blog entry..plus their uptime is horrible.
HostGator
This is the best company by far to host with. I still can't find much to complain about. Nearly everything is unlimited, my email accounts share my allotted disk space and they use the ever popular and robust CPanel for management and allow you to manage nearly everything yourself. The statistics, webmail and speed of the connection are far superior to anything I've used and they worked with me on the type of hosting I am doing. Their features are numerous, they include e-commerce solutions as well as a dedicated IP for SSL support. Customer support is free through the 800 number or via instant chat. And the chat service is not basic help, they can reconfigure servers....
The only complaint I have is some password and database name limitations.
In short, I was completely stressed until I hosted with HostGator. I highly recommend their service. Oh yes, I forgot to mention their 99.9% uptime guarantee with a full month's refund if they dip under it.