I started up a blog using Bluehost as the provider and Wordpress as the platform. At the time Bluehost had a nice deal where I paid a pretty low rate for three years of hosting. They've also given me good service when I've had questions or problems. I'd give them a recommendation.
Wordpress was very easy to install and set up and there are lots of great plugins (many of them free or very low cost) to add lots of functionality. With limited experience I set up a Wordpress blog that is connected to a Mailchimp mass mailer that mails subscribers when a new post is submitted, got Google AdSense and Media.net ads up and running, and have other plugins installed to create some pretty slick tables and graphs as well as search for public domain images to use in posts. Though I haven't used them I know there are plugins to do other major tasks such as taking credit card orders, set up a forum, etc.
Mike