Need an opinion on webhosting and IRC Hosting

Hello, folks. I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this: My request doesn't quite fit ANY of them, but oh well.

First question:

The thread 'Alternative HTTP hostersl' started me on a new webhost hunt, and I think I found a pretty good one at http://www.hostgator.com/. They have great prices, are about 30 bucks cheaper than what I have now (I have a reseller account on another host which is actually pretty good but I want to get out of the reseller buisness because I'm tired of acting like a grumpy landlady.), and they actually DO have 24 hour support and a real 1800ish number! I called!

I'm probably gonna go with them but I just wanted to know if anyone had any experience with them beforehand. They seem to have good reviews.

Now here is my more pressing question:

I run an IRC server on a small network. The network itself is only about 150-250 people on at a time. We're tiny, but we're starting to expand.

My server (which I pay about 9 bucks a month for) is probably the most crippled server out of the bunch. I can only have 100 users at a time, I can't ever be a hub so if our main hub dies we're kind of screwed, and I can't host services, which would suck in case our main hub ever...yanno, dies. Uptime is okay but we've been DoS attacked roughly 6 months ago and that was no fun. I just think for the same amount of money (or maybe a couple of bucks more) I can get something better.

The problem with IRCD hosts is that while there are many, there's not a lot of reviews on them. I'd like to have a server that can have at least 200-250 people on it, be a hub, and as a plus be able to run services in an emergency. Uptime and stability are huge pluses, and if possible (though this is not that crucial because IRC takes so little bandwidth) a server on the west coast would be lovely-jovely because we don't have one there.

I know it's a lot to ask, but anyone with knowledge on this type of thing would be super helpful.

Before you ask: I would run IRC on my own machine if I could, but I live at home and my parents use all the computers. If I ran Linux on any machine, (We use Unreal BTW) I would utterly kill them. :( Plus my ISP won't allow it, though we use so little bandwidth I'm sure I could get it through if I really wanted.

Jam it back in, in the dark.