donnacha, I assure you, many automattic servers are still running LiteSpeed and it's easy to prove based on certain responses to certain queries.

There is no 15-day timeout on the free version of Litespeed, only the commercial version. The free version has a limit of 5 httpd.conf accounts and 100 simultaneous connections (1500 can be queued). It's definitely not for everyone but something to try when a site outgrows apache.

If starting from scratch I would definitely use nginx, but if you need a drop in apache replacement that can be done in less than an hour, use litespeed. It's literally doubles the capacity of any server that was using apache. I am not a fan of the commercial price tag and I hope they feel the pressure from open source alternatives over time to reduce that.

I do agree with you that shared hosting is a bad idea for any larger site. The wrong VPS environment can be just as bad because it's a complete lie you are isolated from neighbors on the node. But not everyone can afford dedicated so the right VPS is a good solution.