Popular? I still pay for Dreamhost’s shared hosting that I never use. Mostly because I’m grandfathered into a dirt cheap $1.95 a month plan from 2010, which comes with a free domain every year. Still useful for small sites, Wordpress, and domain hosting, I guess.
I used to use EC2, but I started using Google Cloud last year, persuaded by a $300, 1-year free trial. Google’s always free stuff is better than Amazon’s, IMO, especially for my needs. A free VM for life tugs at my frugality pretty hard.
Right now, I’m playing around with Google App Engine, which has the potential to host a ton for stuff that I use infrequently or for development purposes, while keeping on Google’s always free tier. It also has the advantage of never having to divert my time to sysadmin work, because there’s no OS or applications to maintain. And it scales automatically, so I never have to migrate later.
Also, when I find a good deal on lowendbox.com, I tend to impulse buy VMs that I don’t need.