RossMAN has the best deal to get your feet wet. @ 50/500, you can test the boundaries of your website and upgrade from there. He's not a business looking into getting you into a contract and charging you for breaking it.
RossMAN is kind enough to host one of my sites. It's free and i want to use the domain to manage emails and teach my parents how to use it through an email client. Something i can control and teach that i wouldn't be able to do with free emails, yahoo/hotmail.
Basically, i paid 8.88 for my dns and that's email for a year. well worth it.
on the other hand, my main website is hosted by devioustrap and i control everything from my own blog, subdomains, and forums for my other friends.
If your epiphany is correct, you need to make strives towards that. Take what's free and move from there.