Hey Zac,
I used to work a Tier-2 help desk at a major web hosting company. What I noticed was that Wordpress users received really bad customer service.
Yes most of the things that went wrong with their site was their fault or the fact they did not update their Wordpress sites and they got hacked.
However... I still didn't like what I saw and heard so I resigned and started my own wordpress hosting solution. Shared/VPS hosting specifically for Wordpress and other popular CMS users. Of course our servers can run lots of other things as well but we optimize them for the fastest Wordpress response times, and security.
I think you would be a really great candidate for our shared hosting because you want to reduce costs (you'll also need a control panel if you get a VPS which is $14.95 extra for cPanel), increase security, and host gallery sites as well.
Of course we could also provide you a VPS with VestaCP (which is free) if you are OK with not going with cPanel. We can also spin you up a Ubuntu EasyEngine VPS to try out.
Hit me up and I'll give you several options to choose from.
