Best Hosting in US?

if you do some research there is nothing wrong with shared hosting. i could also tell horror stories (cough1and1cough) but i've also had shared hosting accounts for years with different hosts with very few issues or down time. the nice thing about shared hosting is everything is really ready to go, the platform is already proven, and there is free support if you have issues or questions. unless you are immediately serving thousands of concurrent users or your app is processor intensive like graphic editing, its fine to start with shared hosting, and then move to vps if required.

Shared hosting has 1 big disadvantage. Your luck ... 
Its often that you have problems either with your "neighbours" or heavy loaded server or additional settings/tools that you have to ask support and some time you may not get it.

VPS's are a little bit harder for initial setup, but after that you are free to do what you want, all tools which are loaded or you add, any settings you may need and other things. 

My example with Digital ocean:
1 VPS for MYSQL (free local network to connect it 10.XXX.XXX.XXX)
1 VPS for Mails (on separate VPS for less load on my web server)
1 VPS for Web server (with all sites, no SQL)
* Full free DNS control.

Best VPS Hosting : Digital Ocean