Fuzzman,
The help you get in these forums used to be a lot better than it is now. I think the staff gets points for clicking the "resolved" button. Check out my "resolved" thread from over a week ago, which also ends with a question mark:
http://forums.x10hosting.com/free-hosting/90280-php-mail-rejected-hotmail.html
As for paid hosting... I just bought a paid hosting account last week. Here's what I can tell you.
The Good:
1. Support is the best I've ever had, with any service I've ever purchased. When you start a support ticket, you get a thorough, well thought-out, and respectful response from Corey (the owner of x10hosting). Usually the response comes in two hours or less, unless Corey happens to be sleeping. And he won't quit helping until you tell him the issue is resolved. Here's a link to my support ticket so you can see what I'm talking about:
http://freeassign.net/phsoa/email_ticket.html
(note the lack of an "Are you sure your computer is turned on?" response)
2. Speed. The paid servers are much faster.
3. You can pay month-to-month (about $6) via paypal, so if you aren't happy, just quit paying the bill. Most hosts want you to pay for an entire year, and insist on a credit card.
The Mediocre
1. Downtime. Until tonight, my site had experienced zero downtime. But at some point this evening, the x10hosting nameservers went down. That took down all sites affiliated with x10hosting, including the paid sites, and this forum. The downtime lasted at least 2 hours. Nameservers are usually pretty reliable, so I don't expect that to happen often.
The Bad
1. The server they put me on is blacklisted as a spam server by most mail providers. Thus far, I've had zero success sending email from my site. Hopefully the problem will go away when Corey puts me on a new server this Friday.
Overall - I recommend you give it a shot. Even with the email problems, I'm a very satisfied customer so far.
- Bill