I'm kind of ashamed to read this thread and see absolutely no advice, just plugs. Guys, at least give this guy some suggestions as to what he should be looking for.
Greg, this is for a paysite, right? A lot of first time paysite owners make a huge mistake that you really need to avoid. And thats going the cheap way out. The speed and reliability of your paysite is essential to your members, if they can't access your site whenever they want to, why should they stay a member?
Go with a quality host that specializes in support and knows how to handle paysites. You don't want to be switching hosting in 3 months because the host you choose is incompetent. Moving free sites from one host to another isn't too difficult, moving paysites is a completely different ball game. Its much more difficult and involves several different companies, including your processing.
Anyway, you want a dedicated server, definitely. I also strongly urge you to have a back-up service as well as a RAID setup. This is basically like insurance, if your hard drive takes a poop (which can and does happen) you can feel pretty confident that your host will have you back online with very little to no effort on your part.
Doing things right may cost a little more, but its well worth saving yourself the hassle. I can't tell you how many paysite owners have told me "man, I wish I would have done this 6 months ago instead." If you would like to talk further, feel free to email me at
[email protected] or ICQ me at 147479144 and I'd be happy to give you more pointers.