Best UK Hosting Company?

Mark9

Free Member
Apr 22, 2020
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Ok so with the current demise of the dreaful TSO host which is now set to become 123Reg (godaddy company) I now have a choice of staying put and being migrated over to 123reg or I move to another hosting company.

No idea if 123 reg will be an improvement, but the reviews certainly look mixed.

I have already done some research and it seems like these companies are pretty sound....

Site Ground
Hostlinger
Blue Host

I'm tempted by Site Ground as they have UK telephone support if needed...

Any recommendations or feedback from other business owners would be appericated.

Mark
 
I run a small agency and I started off with TSO Host who are a complete joke. I've used others too, but the best by far has to be Krystal.io

Check them out, they have a very solid infrustructure, and i've never had an issue with them. I have multiple ONYX accounts and their top end reseller hosting package, with 30+ clients on it.
 
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I've been with GURU a number of years and seldom have any problems, when there are they are very quick to sort out.

Just have to be aware that their cheap package doesn't include email (available as add-on)

 
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Ok so with the current demise of the dreaful TSO host which is now set to become 123Reg (godaddy company) I now have a choice of staying put and being migrated over to 123reg or I move to another hosting company.

No idea if 123 reg will be an improvement, but the reviews certainly look mixed.

I have already done some research and it seems like these companies are pretty sound....

Site Ground
Hostlinger
Blue Host

I'm tempted by Site Ground as they have UK telephone support if needed...

Any recommendations or feedback from other business owners would be appericated.

Mark
Can you share your website requirements? Do make sure your new provider helps you with migration.
 
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This is subjective, there are lots of great hosts but even more bad ones.
I see a few recommendations for Krystal, but when I tried them (and reviewed them), they were not very good, either the service or support.

Siteground are also one of the worst, everyone who recommends them is a shill. They admin most of the facebook groups and forums and remove any negative comments about themselves.

Bluehost are also terrible. Stay away from he big names. Better to go with a small host.

I personally recommend Guru, who I have been using for several years after testing out many others. I used to own a hosting company myself, so my standards and knowledge are much higher than most.

You can checkout my GURU review here: https://michaels.me.uk/review-of-guru-co-uk-wordpress-hosting/
 
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I see a few recommendations for Krystal, but when I tried them (and reviewed them), they were not very good, either the service or support.

Interesting, my experience is the opposite.

I switched to Krystal around 18 months ago and, like many others here, the service and support has been excellent. I'd recommend them all day long.
 
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Doesn’t matter who you use. There will always be good and bad experiences.

My recommendation would be

 
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maybe pick one from the Let's Encrypt list

community.letsencrypt.org/t/web-hosting-who-support-lets-encrypt/6920#full

choose one that offers cPanel - some do, some don't
 
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Well let’s see how this goes ….

Because I trust him, I’ve taken @fisicx recommendation and this very afternoon bought hosting from Hosting UK to host my three sites (pretty much just hobby sites, all Wordpress based) currently with 123, having been with TSO host before the take over, and Vidahost before that.

My 123 hosting is due for renewal in 15 days, I’ve saved myself £20 by moving to Hosting UK.

This evening’s task is to begin to move the sites over. Will keep you updated as to how easy the whole process is over the next few days (bet you can’t wait, got to be more exciting than Eastenders!)
 
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Interesting, my experience is the opposite.

I switched to Krystal around 18 months ago and, like many others here, the service and support has been excellent. I'd recommend them all day long.
well I am a former developer and hosting company owner, so my knowledge and experience go way above the average customer, ergo I am aware when the support stuff are blagging me or simply have no idea what they are talking about, something the average non-technical customer wouldn't know. My expectations are also therefore much higher than the average consumer.
Most of the big and well known hosts are awful, GoDaddy being one of the worst.
 
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Been with Krystal a few months. Nightmare. Messed up the initial migration, Managed WordPress offers no noticeable management aside from backups which I do myself anyway.
They completely ignored my error logs and I lost all of my site rankings - still recovering.
I've tried a few others and they have been as bad or worse.

I'm desperate to find a reliable host who will work with me as a TEAM.

Any ideas, please?
 
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Working as a 'team' should not get such a reaction in a business group.
Sadly, it is rare in the world of hosting to 'get what you pay for'.
Krystal looks like a cheap hosting company. What level of service are you expecting?

I've used @webhostuk for the last couple of years and been happy with them. Not really a team, more of a service provider.
 
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As promised, a quick update.

Signed up for HostingUK on Monday afternoon, Monday evening filled out the form for their free web migration service.

Early Tuesday, I was contacted by their support - I would get one free migration, they would migrate my other two sites for £60 each. I asked them to do the migration of one site to begin with, which they did. By Tuesday afternoon it was all done - there had been some too-ing and fro-ing as they asked me for login credentials etc on my old host. On the whole, I felt very supported by the the new host, it definitely felt like I had someone in the UK working on my behalf, response to my questions were swift (normally within, say 10 mins)

I decided to try and move my other sites myself, using UpDraft plus plugin. All went well, except my images (for both sites) didn’t get copied to my new site. The “structure “ of the media library looked right, but the images were not there. Found them in my old host, thought: “all I need to do is FTP them down to my PC, then FTP them up to my new host) “.

Couldn’t connect via FTP to my old (123) host, so fired off a support ticket. After a few hours had had no reply, so decided to manually download and then upload my photos. Took a few hours ( I have a lot of images on both blogs) but all done. The following morning got a reply to my 123 support ticket - I didn’t have FTP rights (surprised me as a few years ago I used to do quite a lot of FTPIng of files onto one of these accounts) but as a measure of good will, they would create an FTP account for me to access this site.

As an aside, one of the sites I moved was the site some of you may remember I was having problems with some people accessing that I started a thread about in April/May time , I think (hope) that this move has resolved the problems I was having then.

Anyway, tldr, @fisicx recommended HostingUk to me, I moved, all went well, I’m happy, hoping to forget about hosting till I have to pay the bill again in 12 months time.
 
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Krystal has been around for a long time, so they're definitely a solid choice. (no past experience with them)

On the other hand, we also provide VPS Hosting (our website), and are operated within the UK, however, our servers are located in Chicago, US. Our team is available to make outbound calls within the UK (simply request a call-back via our Support Tickets and detail your enquiry).
 
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Ok so with the current demise of the dreaful TSO host which is now set to become 123Reg (godaddy company) I now have a choice of staying put and being migrated over to 123reg or I move to another hosting company.

No idea if 123 reg will be an improvement, but the reviews certainly look mixed.

I have already done some research and it seems like these companies are pretty sound....

Site Ground
Hostlinger
Blue Host

I'm tempted by Site Ground as they have UK telephone support if needed...

Any recommendations or feedback from other business owners would be appericated.

Mark
This is a dilemma many of us have faced, especially with hosting changes like this. 123 Reg does have mixed reviews, so your hesitation makes sense. From what you’ve listed, SiteGround is a solid choice. Their UK-based telephone support can be a lifesaver when things go wrong, and they’re known for being reliable, fast, and secure. Hostinger is a good budget option if cost is a big factor, but it might not have the same level of personalised support as SiteGround. Bluehost is decent, especially for WordPress users, but it’s more US-focused, and I’ve heard their customer support can be hit or miss. If having UK-based support and a strong reputation are priorities, SiteGround seems like the clear winner. You might also want to check out Krystal—they’re a UK-based host with excellent reviews and strong support for small businesses.
 
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You should read their recent reviews. Most start with "used to be good"
If I search in Google for "Krystal hosting reviews" I can see only good reviews, only very few bad ones?
 
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Brixly used to be good but was taken over towards the end of 2024 and a lot of users experienced huge amounts of problems, among others their email servers got blacklisted so this caused mayhem. Then their support team got overwhelmed and it all turned sour. They're trying to resolve things but if you look on Trustpilot it's still not good. So I would avoid. If you're looking to host one website I would use Krystal, if you want cPanel reseller I would use Snappyhost or Guru, if you want very quick and helpful support I would use 20i.
 
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check that they offer shell access, if you spend time grepping through your logfiles

and there may be an occasional requirement to copy all your website files into a tarball, to download

this can't be done from cPanel's File Manager, as far as I can discover
 
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For the last four years we used a host called Stablepoint. We moved to them from Site Ground. Absolutely no problems with the hosting but the support got worse over the years and it was taking up to 8 hours to get a reply to a support ticket and phones were never answered. Then they announced a large increase in their hosting costs so I started to look elsewhere.

Taking the advice of several members here I transferred across to Krystal and can honestly say I am impressed with the hosting and the support received so far. The free migration could have gone better, but after a few months I am very happy with the service and the support when I have needed it.
 
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A bit late to the party....
I came to TSO via Vidahost from this forum some years ago.... Once TSO got hold it was down down down and I am glad they have got what their increasingly dreadful attitude and customer service deserved.

I moved all the sites and business to Siteground who were ultra helpful with transfers of WP sites... not quote so hot with a Joomla site but we got there without the toys going out of the pram.
Uptimes well in excess of 99.5% and all associated bits running well. No complaints here.
 
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