Clook and other UK webhosts such as Names.co.uk - feedback?

[Azam.net]

I have heard good things about Clook. However, their website doesn't look too professional and only has a Google PR of 2/Alexa 170,000, which doesn't give me much confidence. Also, all the fantastic service seems to be offered mainly by one person - Jim.

Anybody tried Clook? Experience?

Also seeking feedback on names.co.uk, bpweb.net and ukhost4u :)

Thank you.

[Rob Holmes]

Hi Nadeem,

GooglePR and Alexa are not the best ways (IMHO) of rating a webhost.

Also I wouldn't worry about them being too small - all our hosting is dealt with by me in out little setup - anyone thats used us for other things knows there are a couple of people behind the scenes - but actually I handle 99% of the hosting questions and it works fine - so if Jim is good then I don't see a problem. Sometimes smaller means better service ;)

As for the others I used namesco a few years back for domains only - they have their own custom control panel for everything which is ok for the basic user but I think it's too basic for me personally. The rest I've never heard of!

Rob

[mattk]

Also I wouldn't worry about them being too small
Hmm, I'm not too sure about that. A friend of mine received an email from his hosting company a few months ago say that basically they were shutting up shop and all his hosting services and emails would be ceasing with immediate effect. Cue massive scramble to get setup with another host before all his sites and email accounts disappeared.

I've not heard of any of those 4 that you mention. Personally, I'd do some digging. Alot of web hosts (but not all) simply re-sell a service from a bigger company. Find out who the bigger company is and go with them.

I host all my sites on Heart Internet and have never had any problems with them at all!

[Rob Holmes]

Also I wouldn't worry about them being too small
Hmm, I'm not too sure about that.

I guess we don't have a set definition of small :)

Just to give you a measure... I consider myself micro - I host a notch over 1500 sites across a number of servers in both UK and US datacentres. We are not resellers for a larger hosting company although all our servers are rented dedicated servers with 24/7/365 4 hour hardware cover - apart from that they are unmanaged and we do the rest.

Rob

[Azam.net]

Rob, I understand what you are saying. I know the level of service you provide is great, but not all hosts are like you. A lot of guys set up online businesses believing the hype they are 'easy' to run and then give up after 3 or 4 years.

My current webhost was 'small'. They shut-up shop without notice and didn't even send an email to inform customers. Phone line dead, no live chat, no response to support tickets... our website has now been down for four days and I have spent about 30 hours trying to get hold of domain name which was under their control (countless emails, phone calls and faxes to Netsol), get hold of up-to-date files etc. I have barely slept since Friday. Similar thing happened with another small host a few years back as well. That is unlikely to happen with a host with 100 staff members and 200,000 customers who are listed on the stock-market.

[SillyJokes]

With a one man band you are going to have problems like those mentioned and also, the best will in the world they can't be available 24/7.

If it will cost you big money to be down over the weekend it is a good idea to go with someone who provides cover.

[4dhosting]

If it's going to cost you big money to be down at any point then you should look at dedicated hosting with some form of managed cover and not basic shared hosting.

The best shared hosting in the world will have issues at some point because their other customers running on the same servers and you can't guarantee their quality of coding, etc. It can only take a few sites to be using 10 database connections of each page which aren't closed off properly for the memory to start leaking away.

I'd always recommend looking at your revenue, how much you'd take in a day and then working out what it will cost you (On your direct bottom line as well as credability) to have your site down. If it's a lot then you need to be thinking managed hosting with a good application availability SLA to backup the services.

We've had customers in the past who had downtime with their previous host and lost £15000 a day then ask us what our cheapest shared hosting package is because they have a hosting budget of £70 per year! If the majority of your income is from a web based application or site you need to be spending a decent amount to ensure that income.

In the end we told them that they spend more than £70 on their toilet roll in a year so how can they expect a guaranteed 100% availability on that budget. It seemed to work :-)

With regards to the big PLC's providing better/support this is not always the case. A lot of the big companies are very un-responsive and often have more downtime than smaller hosts. A few are very, very good and usually specalise in Managed Services but the vast majority all have "Big Corporate" issues.

I've had a few run-ins with Clook and I can say they do provide good support however I've no idea if there are any more people than Jim there. Names.co.uk is a larger company but I've never used them or know how good/bad their support is and the same goes for UKHost4U (Although I think they are a similar size to Clook).

HTH in some way,

David.

[4dhosting]

Forgot to say the obvious bits I thought of :-)

Why not check the company out? See if they are a Limited or PLC, do a quick Companies House search to see how long they've been around and maybe even download their accounts (It's only £1).

That'll give you an idea of who's established and who is a "bedroom host" although with the recent merger of Telecity/RedBus and the rackspace/power pricing hikes of around 400-500% I would expect those selling at or just above cost to be disappearing shortly :)

[Rob Holmes]

In the end we told them that they spend more than £70 on their toilet roll in a year so how can they expect a guaranteed 100% availability on that budget. It seemed to work :-)


:lol:

Rob