Never used Hostwinds, but have talked to them a few times -- once literally for a couple hours on a Sunday about hosting. They seem pretty legit, and like me own their hardware. I would give them a chance. The big companies are ok, but you dont get as good or personal service. Smaller companies are more likely to be proactive and helpful.
And no one can give you 100% uptime -- even Amazon cloud has crashed before, just look for 99.9% == that means your downtime in a month would be less than 43 minutes.
There are a lot of costs running a good hosting service, so if you want quality hosting it tends to cost a bit more than 99 cents or 1.99!