It's not reasonable to expect your best connectivity provider to be a good email provider or web hosting provider. Deal with your services seperately.
If you get shell access to a shared server, so will others, making it inherently vulnerable to poor service.
Own your own domains for web and email addresses. Switching a hosting provider should not mean changing your address.
If you want to host your own services, be forewarned that many places won't accept SMTP from an ISP pool address without special provisions, even a static address.
It's also quite hard to get a static address with a 'consumer' account. If you want to run services, you should look at a 'business' account. Which will be correspondingly more money for the additional and improved services.
Lots of stuff is better now than 'the good old days' but the landscape is certainly different (and not less complex, just less technically complex and more sophisticated businesswise).
Own your own domains for web and email addresses. Switching a hosting provider should not mean changing your address.
Seconded.
I use a shell/hosting company for hosting my domain (email+web) and my "home shell". I get my domain name registration through a friend for cheap. I get dialup through a dialup provider.
I highly recommend my shell/hosting co. They're nyip.net, and just as you'd expect from a company called "NY IP", they're in California. :) It's two guys in a basement, I think, and the service has been wonderful. They prefer highly technically clued customers. They withstood a slashdotting, when an OS project they host made the frontpage, without going down.
Some food for thought
If you get shell access to a shared server, so will others, making it inherently vulnerable to poor service.
Own your own domains for web and email addresses. Switching a hosting provider should not mean changing your address.
If you want to host your own services, be forewarned that many places won't accept SMTP from an ISP pool address without special provisions, even a static address.
It's also quite hard to get a static address with a 'consumer' account. If you want to run services, you should look at a 'business' account. Which will be correspondingly more money for the additional and improved services.
Lots of stuff is better now than 'the good old days' but the landscape is certainly different (and not less complex, just less technically complex and more sophisticated businesswise).
Best wishes
Re: Some food for thought
Seconded.
I use a shell/hosting company for hosting my domain (email+web) and my "home shell". I get my domain name registration through a friend for cheap. I get dialup through a dialup provider.
I highly recommend my shell/hosting co. They're nyip.net, and just as you'd expect from a company called "NY IP", they're in California. :) It's two guys in a basement, I think, and the service has been wonderful. They prefer highly technically clued customers. They withstood a slashdotting, when an OS project they host made the frontpage, without going down.