No such thing as a fee lunch and it would make me squirm to give up control of my site to the flow of ads and so forth over which I had no control. And nothing against Russians I guess but I like that I am hosted by a US company with servers on US soil.
I I have used Startlogic for years now. It is a competitor to Hostgator and at about the same price point. Their is a group of five or so such companies that get good reviews for service and bundled features. I've never had problems with Startlogic and customer service has always been timely and great at resolving minor issues that come up. Friends with Hostgator have no compaints. I have heard some mumblings from GoDaddy hosting customers.
I pay about $100 for the year for domain registration renewal of two domains both nested under the same account. I get unlimited everything as far as storage, bandwith, email addresses, etc. and there are nice user interfaces for setting up a basic website, ecommerce/estore, blog, etc. applications. I do get only one website with my plan but I think the ability to have as many as you want is another $5-10 month. I have no need for a separate website at the moment.
I guess I just view the $100/year for peace of mind in having my own domains nicely hosted a cost of doing business. That is like a Starbuck's and a muffin a month?