GoDaddy never struck me as a particularly evil corporation, just practical. But I would be interested to hear any recommendations for an alternative hosting company, and the logic behind the choice.
For hosting alternatives, you'd have to describe what you want. Heroku for rails is nice and is built on Amazon's EC2 stuff (which you could use for other apps)... for VPSes, I like Linode a lot.
For DNS, I recommend dnsimple. They do DNS and domain registration for my three domains and their UI is amazing. Here's a referral link that, if used, gives both of us one month free DNS service (which is only $3 anyway). https://dnsimple.com/r/96a980397648e9
!) Look for hosting companies that are targeting developers (Linode and Heroku are both good at this). The tools and UI will be more sane and you'll have a more pleasant interaction.
2) Avoid bargain bin VPS services for anything that's not a playground. If it can't disappear tomorrow forever, it's not bargain-bin material.
