Another vote for cyberlNc.com for hosting! Scott and his team are top notch and my shop hummmmms its so fast. 
Very satisfied customer.
Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without ?:?:
It certainly isnāt perfect - but i have yet to find a single paid or opensource software product that is! Are you telling me in any project or experience you have never come across an unexpected scenario that needed to be thought about, worked around, or fixed?
There are have been many situations where i have had to get my hand dirty in the CS-cart code, and on all these occasions support have always been willing to offer advice, a helping hand, and or take my changes and build them into later releasesā¦SO personally i am still behind CS, although i might wait for a bit on the 2.0 front to let that experience the wild first!
Hosting wiseā¦ If your sticking a a system like this on a shared host then you cannot expect perfect performance. This will be the case for any CMS, Ecomm, CRS, or custom system you build. Shared hosting is simple - they need to shove as many sites on the same box as possible to make a profit. If this means turning off features, limiting bandwidth, downloads, compute cycles, then this is what you are paying for. If you want the fastest site on the block, buy your own box or at least a VPS or similar.
When people ask me about this - and many of them do not know if their sites will be a success or not, i suggest they start light (costs) and ove up as they can afford it. After all it does not take long to move a site - it can almost be seamless!