When people ask for ideal Joomla hosting, there are usually only two things to consider... ask the host:
Do they run phpsuexec?  (With phpsuexec, the permissions problems are fixed)
Do they have fantastico?  (this is just makes setup faster, and is more convenient)

Everything else, like Safe Mode, Magic Quotes, Register Globals, etc can be set easily via php.ini.

Pull up your phpinfo, and you will notice: "Server API    CGI" if you are running phpsuexec.

i have used several hosts most of them nightmares. Hostrocket and lunarpages have been the best. i thought about trying some others btu to be honest with you if im happy where im at im gonna stop looking.

I've been using MediaTemple for about 6 months now. I started on their GridServer but upgraded to their VPS soon after. Their support is top notch...meaning, that it's 24 hour support, and I've never had a problem calling them at 1AM and getting help quickly. Even though I'm on a VPS, they never seem to have a problem guiding me through any issues I have.

The only issue is they don't have Joomla as one if their natively installed apps. However, that's never really been an issue because they have an extensive knowledgebase that supports Joomla related issues.

I've been happy with them so far.

I notice that no one has mentioned Planet. We have had our own server at EV1 and now with Planet (bought EV1) for about 3 years now, and we've always had good experiences with them. We have multiple domains and subdomains. Hardly any down time. Good response to service calls (even from Australia!), although not always fixed the first time. A dead motherboard was fixed in under an hour, which I thought we pretty good. They run cPanel, which works well for me. And we've never had to manually install Joomla on any of our sites. We register our domains through GoDaddy.

Is Planet not liked or just not used?

I'm using Servage.com and GoDaddy.

Servage has been great, 500GB of space and 5TB transfer for $90/yr. You can do multiple domains under your one account - and it's "real" multi-site hosting, unlike GoDaddy's way of doing it, which puts all sites off the main one and aliases the domain name.

I had about 15 sites at one time on my Servage account with no noticeable speed or performance issues, and about 4 of them were Joomla installs, several Wordpress, and a few static/sales letter-type sites. I've had only minimal downtime (maybe 2-3 times for a few minutes) in the almost two years I've been using Servage, much less than any other host I've been on. Speed is good. I currently have all but one of sites cleaned off and redesigning things, but you can check out my one live site at www.comictools.com

Support at Servage is awesome - fast response times, EVERY time within about 10-15 minutes on all my tickets.

Servage unfortunately recently removed their Joomla autoinstaller, but it is still easy to do a manual install.

GoDaddy's autoinstaller for Joomla is nice, but their hosting doesn't give me quite enough control and there are some things that just don't work for me. I would recommend Servage if you want to build a really robust site (and need multi-site hosting), and need to create folders outside the html directory (good for securing downloads).

--Donnie

The positive reply about BlueHost is surprising to me a my sites are going down daily. I would love to have a resolution to the problem. I have really liked their services up until my using Joomla sites. I have asked their support multiple times if there is something that I am doing or can do to prevent the issues.

Josepha