from what i remember, most of these companies charge for a year in advance. and... if your site creates too much load, you would be asked to leave or upgrade. shared accounts are only good for low traffic sites. dreamhost in fact does not allow you to use their shared accounts for online storage of files. a friend was sent a warning. i was using his account on dreamhost for backups of my sites. he was told to remove the files or put them in public folders accessible from the site itself.