I agree with the statement, "You get what you pay for". As a web developer and having several projects in my portfolio I've always started with a shared hosting account then moved right to dedicated servers.
Based on experience: CHEAP shared hosting with cpanel is great for 2-3 months... then your site gets more traffic. Ah this point you'll have issues, that great customer service declines dramatically and your account starts being suspended at no warning due to having what they call "too much traffic" but they advertise the plan as "unlimiited" everything.
The point is, "Unlimited" is a cheap marketing ploy because server resources are finite at this point the datacenter tries to get you to upgrade packages, or to a VPS. Your viewers onsite will be displeased and you'll be stressed setting up the migration. Worst off, webhost's give you cheap montnly prices and can afford to because you are locked up into a 1 year or more contract, which you will have to pay a fee to get out off.
I've had this happen to me several times with several different mainstream hosts. Now adays I pick plans based on monthly prices that I'm not obligated to be in contract. If I don't use dedicated servers, the plans I use usually cost $10/month, but I don't run into any problems, and support staff are awesome from beginning to finish. They'll move my application to another server (very seamless, hardly any downtime) until I come up with a solution on the next step of the migration.
Sorry for the long post, just my experience. Hope that helps you :wink2: