This might not be the best place to ask this but, you guys seem to know your stuff. Currently I host 14 sites under my own using Host Gator baby plan. Problem is they only offer 25 connections so when any one of my clients opens Mac Mail.app to check their email using IMAP it opens to many connections right away and takes our sites offline. They have a VPS hosting plan that gives unlimited connections for IMAP but....it is 10 times the cost. Anyone have experience with this and or know of any good alternatives? thanks
Yep, you get what you pay for - the cheap plans have many restrictions like that, these are loss-leaders intended to get you to "buy up" when you realize these limitations. It's almost a scam!
Virtually any other VPS or shared web hosting company with a business plan, not the freebie stuff, will give you what you want - and as you spend more money you will discover static IP's, SSL, load balanced/fair share servers as you add on hosts, reseller tools beyond the usual found in CP, and usually better tech support when it counts with better response time.
I'll leave it up to others to make suggestions. I'm just responding generally, FYI and others following.
