I need a new (shared) Windows host because my current one - Hosting.com (formerly HostMySite) no longer supports WordPress blogs in their Windows plans.

There are a ZILLION hosting companies out there and most of the "review" sites seem to just be shills for whoever advertises on them. Also, it's hard to tell which companies even do Windows hosting without drilling down in their plans.

Is there any good strategy for trying to narrow my search? I want:


Financially solid - been around for years - NON-fly-by-night company, preferably who own their own servers in a safe, modern facility. No resellers!
IIS 7 / .Net 4.0, etc (reasonably current software)
MS-SQL - 1 db is OK, 2 is better
Decent performance (no overloaded sharing).
24/7 telephone tech support
Competent, friendly
WordPress 3.x
US or Canadian based.

Thanks in advance for suggesting a good strategy!

My advice: look around in offer forum, do whois search for background & history, read information on hosting provider's website, and judge the host with your experience and sense.
If you bother too much finding an excellent host for your critical site, the time you spent on list of criteria & good strategy & searching could be spent on more productive work, make more money and get your own dedicated server.
BTW How is your experience with Hostmysite telephone technical support?

I use sibername.com for linux web hosting but I have seen on their web site they offer windows. For me they are good.
PS: they are based in Canada.

Yes, I know what you mean about finding Windows hosting.
I have been doing a search for a Windows VPS lately and there are 85% Linux and 15% Windows.
Anyway, I noticed that webecs has II7 (Windows 2008) on shared hosting.
Try sending them a support ticket and ask all there is to ask.
(Not sure about Wordpress. They might add it for you if you ask)
Is 11 years long enough for you?
If you can't find what you want, then the alternative is a Windows VPS and offer sharing the cost with few friends.
This is what I am doing today, as I got fed up with shared hosting and waiting for support. Now I do my own support and can add any application that I need (within limits).

I am not familiar with Wordpress, so I took a look at the server requirements, and they recommend:
- Php
- MySQL
- Apache or Nginx server

The first two can be installed in a Windows server. No problem.
To have an Apache server on a Windows server poses a problem to the web hosting company, and they will not support it in general.
They also say:
(Optional) Apache mod_rewrite module (for clean URIs known as Permalinks)
Hope that this helps. Good luck. :)