I use AlienLayer, but I don't know if they offer shared hosting (you can check).
You should only run a VPS if you know what you're doing, i.e. you have knowledge of SSH and Serial shell connectivity, downloading Linux RPM packages, and compiling the binaries for services such as MySQL and PHP. It's very complicated :P
Fortunately, having shared hosting takes care of all of that. The only downside is that you're much more restricted on resources, plus you're sharing everything on the server with God knows how many other customers :o