I've used Namecheap now for quite a while to register all my domain names. It is easy to use and they offer great customer service. I love that all my domains are listed in one place and I can see right away when they are coming up for renewal. They also offer emails reminders so you never let a domain name lapse.
Namecheap offers private domain registration so you can protect your personal information. The pricing of annual domain renewals is comparable to any other big registrar and better than many. They also offer hosting services if you need some of your domains hosted.
HostNine has been a great hosting provider. So much so that I've transferred all of my domains to this one host. I have a reseller account which is awesome because I can host up to 100 domains under one account for one low monthly fee. HostNine also has great customer service.
If you have many domains this is a great way to go. It is for low to medium traffic sites like authority blogs or niche sites because there is a maximum storage and bandwith allocation. However, the maximum space/bandwith is quite large. I'm currently hosting 20+ sites with no problem.
GetResponse is my email marketing provider and I love their service. It is simple, easy to use and very graphic. I can drag and drop, copy and paste and use all the other shortcuts to create an email. They also have dozens of ready to use templates to make it simple.
I used to be intimidated to use an autoresponder or do email marketing and even tried one of GetResponse's competitors. I hated it. I was clunky and hard to use. I love the simplicity, ease of use and great customer service that GetResponse offers. They even have an app so I can manage my email campaigns from my phone!
There are a lot of tools floating around that will help you do keyword research but my favorite is Long Tail Pro. It is simple enough for a newbie but powerful enough for a guru. The customer service is great and I can't even count the number of updates Spencer Hawes and his software team have done for this product. It was great to start with and they just keep improving on it.
Some of my favorite features are that: I can save campaigns so I can always get back to the core search terms no matter how far down the rabbit hole my research takes me, I can see the top 10 competitors for a specific search term, get info like the number of backlinks they have and other metrics that help me decide if I can be competitive for that search term or not.