It seems that this topic has not been discuss in last 12 to 18 months. Hence bringing this up again.
I am currently using goDaddy but seems very expensive. A lot of hosting sites are offering attractive rates for the first year but after reading the fine prints they are just as costly.
Any recommendation for good reliable service (including tech support) at a reasonable rate?
I’m on the lookout for a new web hosting service too as I want to move away from Dreamhost. It might pay dividends to keep on eye on r/webhosting or alternatively check out the recommendations in the sidebar on that sub-reddit.
mainly blog from day one, may be photos at some stage
Retail hosting overall has gone up somewhat in the past couple of years, especially places that use cPanel. cPanel changed their licensing model so that each hosting account now costs the datacenter money, so prices ticked up at least slightly due to that. Then inflation hit. 
If I were going to host a blog not on my own server, I would go with either SiteGround or BlueHost. Support seems to be decent based on client experiences. My experience migrating either to or from GoDaddy has been that it’s nightmarish - so I avoid them if at all possible.
I’ve been with One.com for close to 20 years now, so needless to say, I have been happy with both the service and the pricing (even if pricing has gone up there as well).
They are based out of Denmark, I believe.
I’ve been with Siteground for several years now and I have been pretty happy with them in terms of quality of hosting tech, site speed, service/support, etc. whenever I have issues.
I actually just got an email from them yesterday about a Valentine’s Day sale they have now for new customers or upgrades. Like others who have posted here, the prices have seemed to be ticking up a bit which is frustrating.
Agree with POV on avoiding GoDaddy. Have dealt with them on some webdev projects and it is always a nightmare. As King Arthur said in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” - Run away!
If you want to keep it really simple and easy, you might also consider micro.blog. It’s perfect for hosting a blog and some pictures.
I have become very fond of the services (registrar, web, email and mailing lists hosting) and humans at tiger technologies - https://www.tigertech.net - where I host several WordPress sites and 3 mailman listservs. UI is straightforward, free of bloat and customer service is wonderful. I recommend them.
So am I. They’re great if you can run your own servers.
really appreciate all the feedback, I shall check them all out.
Great and proud to be in this community
What’s worth considering is that many hosting packages aren’t very expensive—until you add more storage which something like photos can eat up quickly. But most blog software (I saw in the other thread you’re using WordPress) will have plugins that can store media on something like Amazon S3 or another storage provider which is much cheaper. This forum stores attachments on Digital Oceans’ Spaces which cuts costs considerably (though I’d recommend using whatever storage option is directly supported by a plugin that can do that instead of using something that works “the same” because there will be differences).
If you’re migrating hosting providers make sure to do a full backup of everything before you move—even if the new provider says they’ll migrate it all for you. It’s worth the peace of mind.
@RosemaryOrchard , really appreciate the tips. Very good point about storing photos on hosting site. This will give me ample time to research when I am ready for migration.
Thanks again everyone !!
Adding a +1 to @sgclark’s recommendation of SiteGround. I switched from my old hosting provider at the end of last year, and have been very happy with them.
Note: They are not a cPanel shop, and I consider that a benefit, a feature. I hate cPanel, personally, and avoiding it was one of my top criteria when looking for a new provider.
They’re not the cheapest, after your intro pricing first year ends. But, as someone who has been on forced migrations from three prior hosting providers who went out of business, I’m not at all unhappy to be with a company that’s charging a sustainable price for their services.
(One out-of-business forced migration? Par for the course. Three?!? Yeah, trust me, I know. “Choose wisely.”)
thanks @Alderete , this gives me a different perspective. Just wondering would migrant from existing wordpress backup to a site not using cPanel would be harder?
based on the advice on this thread, I have successfully tried exporting the backup using all-in-one migrant plug in and imported into another site. Pretty straightforward. However both are using cPanel.