Although I'm not the Anon Monk who posted the question, thanks so much for the detailed reply, halfcountplus. Very helpful.

I'm guessing that since a VPS looks just like another server, you get to choose your own fq hostname, and can set up TLS certs and everything as you wish.

VPS's really seem to be a good middle ground between shared hosting and running your own co-located hardware. Though, I have no idea how difficult it is for the ISP to manage (haven't used Xen before).