In my opinion, it depends on factors like requirements/features (i.e. can you install a database and modify the installed software on the OS), initial affordability (the price of starting out), scaling affordability (the price of growing), learning curve (how complicated is it to understand your architecture on this platform), maintenance (how involved with the bare metal of the host do you have to be to get anything worthwhile done), and how easy it is to set up SSL in terms of cost and process.

This is my opinion (as a rating out of 10 - 1 being extremely bad and 10 being extremely good) on some hosting providers I have used, in terms of the above quantifiers:

• Digital Ocean
  • Requirements/Features: 10/10
  • Initial Affordability: 8/10
  • Scaling Affordability: 6/10
  • Learning Curve: 5/10
  • Maintenance: 5/10
  • SSL: 5/10
• Amazon
  • Requirements/Features: 8/10
  • Initial Affordability: 10/10
  • Scaling Affordability: 10/10
  • Learning Curve: 4/10
  • Maintenance: 5/10
  • SSL: 6/10
• Heroku
  • Requirements/Features: 7/10
  • Initial Affordability: 10/10
  • Scaling Affordability: 2/10
  • Learning Curve: 8/10
  • Maintenance: 9/10
  • SSL: 7/10
• Now
  • Requirements/Features: 5/10 (No built-in database support, rather use 3rd party APIs)
  • Initial Affordability: 6/10
  • Scaling Affordability: 9/10
  • Learning Curve: 10/10
  • Maintenance: 10/10
  • SSL: 10/10

There are other hosts available, like OpenShift, which I hear very good things about (and think would be a very good fit for Node.js apps) but I haven't ever used them so can't give a rating.

I think right now, at this point in time - the Node ecosystem points toward Zeit's Now as the best hosting provider for Node apps, that is if you are willing to use a Backend-as-a-Service or similar 3rd-party APIs for persistent data storage - especially if you have a microservices based architecture.

Typical hosting is not recommended for apps where you need custom environment and libraries. Clouds are recommended instead.

For beginner I would recommend DigitalOcean. It has best, simple UI/UX and allows you to bootstrap your own server very fast only from 5$ per month. They give you many images out of the box like classic Linux+Nginx+PHP+MySQL or with node.js as well.

For advanced users - AWS, Azure but they are more expensive.

AS @mevrael commented i vote for DigitalOcean, it's not expensive, you can start for 5$ month, and customize everything you want with nice interface and control panel, and if you need have support for docker containers.