I never even thought about physical distance. That's a good point. None of those sites seem to be real focused on reliability or speed, just price. Even though they seem to be good values, if the servers are down often, the features are useless.
After looking around
findmyhosting.com, I sorted a search according to ratings as opposed to price and saw a lot of good reviews and a relatively high uptime for
WebHostingBuzz. Their servers are located in Dallas in a data center connected through Time Warner fiber lines. That's pretty close to where I'm located, and those who will be using it will be in my area.
I think I'll take your advice and try it out if I can. If not I can just buy it and I'll have a 30 day money back guarantee.
Stinky, how'd you get that for $22 a year? It says $8/month on their site.