There are fewer and fewer truly independent hosting companies these days. Many are being bought up by Endurance International Group (EIG), which itself was bought by Accel-KKR and GS Capital Partners back in 2011. Here are a couple of sites that warning about using any of the brands that have been brought into their fold:
As Full As Possible List of EIG Companies and Brands With Details EIG Hosting Companies Brands With Details (+ Non-EIG Hosting Recommendation)I'm still using Hostgator because I signed up for 3 yrs. My domain is handled by Namecheap. No real complaints with either company, but I plan on moving to
CrocWeb for my hosting next year.
I'll be moving to CrocWeb, even though it's based in Canada. That has never been a problem for the past 9 months, when another forum I help administer, switched to them. Their help has been patient, quick, detailed and extremely helpful even though we are using their cheapest plan: 10GB SSD storage, unlimited bandwidth for $106 for the first 3 years (that can be further reduced to $63.72 by using a 40% discount code which I'll be happy to send you).
I've seen at least one company offering $1.50/mon (with a multi-year contrct, I'm sure), but I'm not sure what we should expect, in the way of "service", for that price!
I do not have a cert so I'm still not using https. By the time that becomes a major factor for non-info collecting sites, I may be too old to keep a site, anyway.