It's not the host. It's the site. It pounds the database. This is our second host who's blown up. Our bigger hitters like Penny and Aggie have so many visitors that the machines never have a moment's rest. On a shared host, which is what I can afford, other clients' sites suffer for all our resource hogging, and the host has to throttle us back.

GoDaddy is a bare bones, no-frills host. The bandwidth they offer could not handle the sort of load the banner exchange deals out.

It's not bandwidth, it's server load. The servers have to perform lots of math to keep track of how many links are being served to whom, how many clicks, etc. We have barely touched the massive amount of bandwidth dreamhost has given us. It's not the problem. I'm very much sure that godaddy's shared hosting solution would run into the same problems because shared hosts cannot behave like dedicated servers, which is what a large banner exchange really needs.

That said, the very kind and wonderful people at Dreamhost have doubled our server resource limits out of the kindness of their hearts. Let's hope the exchange stays up now :) That kind of thoughtful, caring customer service is why we chose Dreamhost.

If you know someone who does, please point them in our direction :)

No, not required! Just a way to boost your impressions if you want to get more exposure.

Traffic ain't the problem: we're not touching our bandwidth limits. The problem is the intensive database and connection loads. I can forward you emails if you want more details. Please see my replies to the other comments.

Plus, I don't think I can afford a dedicated server or a Network Solution.