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richb201, I've used a bunch of hosts in the 14+ years I've been working on websites. I've never had a host give me the level of support you desire. It's simply not their job. As a developer, it's your job to know the dependencies and requirements of your application, and you should be able to ask a host specific questions without signing up. By asking the appropriate questions, you'd save yourself a lot of time, but then you'd probably already know the answer. Shared hosting is meant for the majority of small websites that don't require anything special. If previous hosts have recommended VPS, that's their way of telling you that you're going outside the box they're putting everyone in. Since you're willing to pay extra for support, why not just use that money to buy the VPS plan? VPS will allow you to have the server just how you want it, and since it works in your development environment, you'd just give the VPS the same extensions/features.
