People have given me recommendations for server providers who don't really provide application level support, or charge $150/hr for it. The charge probably isn't a huge issue, but I have to wonder if they have enough suitably qualified people to help with issues with MySQL, Wordpress, PHP, etc. Dreamhost who he's with isn't great, but they can generally help eventually.
@michaelmurfy any SSD storage is going to be too expensive, up to $200 a month just for the storage, plus $100 for the storage. That's why we're not really looking at AWS, unless he can use a cart that supports S3. S3 is 1/4 the price of Linode / Vultr.
Not really sure what he'll do. By default he'll keep paying US$180 / month to Dreamhost for a dedicated server.