I wouldn’t recommend any shared-hosting providers unless you were looking into reseller accounts.
Using a VPS provider with core in Greenmountain/Lefdalmine, Equinix, Softlayer/Bluemix, OVH, or even DIY with AWS for anything more than a personal website/application because there are plenty of free hosting options for that.
They usually have tremendously restrictive bandwidth limitations, etc.
$6/year is so cheap - less than 2¢ per day - that it’s worth it.
I already have 9GB of video files hosted that I’m sharing with people on it. They love it. Fast downloads. I’ve already got more for my money than a box.com, dropbox, mega, or any other cloud hosting account can provide.
I get that there are other and better providers, but none that deliver as much for as little. I really don’t see anything wrong.
And as for heavy duty purposes - colocation is the only way to fly.