can anyone recommend a good UK web host?

[Zaina]

Hi everyone,

I am very new to building a online store. I do unstand that it is the best to find a UK webhosting. Can anyone recommend a good one? is it better to register your domain name on on site and find different site to be your web host?


Thanks

Zaina

 

[Red Eye Media]

We always tell our clients to keep their domains away from their web host.
You never know what's around the corner. We have some space on our Rackspace servers if you are interested. Also offer an online shopping cart service which is also hosted on Rackspace.

If there is anything I can tell you about either, please let me know.

 

[los_design]

Hi everyone,

I am very new to building a online store. I do unstand that it is the best to find a UK webhosting. Can anyone recommend a good one? is it better to register your domain name on on site and find different site to be your web host?


Thanks

Zaina

Hi Zaina

2 things to consider...

1 Using a UK web host is beneficial if your target market is solely the UK
2 As above, register your domain name away from your host. It can be cheaper AND safer.

We offer ecommerce support and UK web hosting services. PM me if you want more details.

Regards
Daren

 

[MarkN]

My 2p

www.vidahost.com

 

[nickpp]

We specialise in magento and x-cart, virtual, vps or dedicated.

We offer free application support also, not just server based.

 

[Stampy]

As a user, I would second the recommendation for Vidahost. Excellent customer service, and very competitive pricing, in my experience.

 

[davek17]

I would confirm that registering your domain name separately is a must. Your domain name is so vitally important to you that you need to urchase it and keep it separate from your webhosting that will probably tie you in. I have used 123reg.co.uk for years. they're cheap, great service and have a good product.

Web hosting is always a tricky and debatable subject. However my advice is to go to tophosts.co.uk and you can see the main ones there or there are website magazines that have pages on all UK hosts in the back.

I have used 1and1.co.uk for years and whilst the support is awful, the product functionality and prices are second to none. Their servers are also very good and whilst the support again is god-awful I haven;t had an issue in 2 years that I havent caused myself!

Lastly I have just been looking at a SOA approach to an online shop. It was about £15 per month, no contract and it gave you a pretty good looking shop with plugins to e-commerce gateways and paypal. The site is http://www.tigercommerce.co.uk.

Hope this helps

 

[tony84]

for domain i would recommend namecheap.com theyre not the cheeapest but their admin panel is easy to use and in 6 years ive never had a problem.

As for host, im with geeksrv.net they are uk based, have small plans which if your starting out is ideal well priced and the owner is on here under the username bubblerack.

Tony

 

[eukhost]

Hi everyone,

I am very new to building a online store. I do unstand that it is the best to find a UK webhosting. Can anyone recommend a good one? is it better to register your domain name on on site and find different site to be your web host?

You can consider one of our cpanel hosting package to host your ecommerce store. You can check the details at http://www.eukhost.com/cpanel-web-hosting.php

cPanel with its advanced features for online stores would be a perfect solution for your ecommerce website to start with.

 

[Joe E]

Thoroughly recommend Phil @ openmind! check them out here http://www.openmindhosting.co.uk

Regards

Joe E

 

[infovinity]

I am sure you have got enough marketing by now , I agree to guys suggesting 2 things

A) to keep domain registeration away from hosting company
B) Find a UK based hosting company

though it totally depends on what site and which products do you have and how good is your marketing strategies are ...

if you have got an site with more then £2500- £3000 per month business, i would recommond to have a dedicated or virtual dedicated server from any good UK hosting company, less then £500 per month defiantly go for the chepast UK host and push it more for marketing, cheap hosting doesn't always mean that you will be buying scrap.

 

[happyoutdoors]

I am sure you have got enough marketing by now , I agree to guys suggesting 2 things

A) to keep domain registeration away from hosting company
B) Find a UK based hosting company

though it totally depends on what site and which products do you have and how good is your marketing strategies are ...

if you have got an site with more then £2500- £3000 per month business, i would recommond to have a dedicated or virtual dedicated server from any good UK hosting company, less then £500 per month defiantly go for the chepast UK host and push it more for marketing, cheap hosting doesn't always mean that you will be buying scrap.

The more I read about hosting the more confused I get. We have a website which is on the verge of being published. Our designer uses 'United Hosting' and he says to maintain the site at £10 pcm I need to transfer the name? Our domain name is registered with '1&1'. Our designer says that if we host it elsewhere we are responsible for any problems.

I am hearing a lot of bad reviews about '1&1' which concerns me as we have ov er 40 domain names registered with them and another 10 with 'Heartinternet'.

The website we have is currently a brochure but will be an ecommerce site.

Anyone care to comment or offer any advice?

Thanks

Geoffrey

 

[Dmkths]

We use vidahost now after being with 1and1, the service with vidahost is fantastic I couldn't recommend them enough speak to dom or seb.

Hope this helps.

 

[Dominic Taylor]

Geoffrey - your designer is probably asking you in a roundabout way to use the hosting company he uses. This makes sense as he is presumably happy and familiar with them and their systems

Thanks Dmkths!

I would confirm that registering your domain name separately is a must. Your domain name is so vitally important to you that you need to urchase it and keep it separate from your webhosting that will probably tie you in.

I know I'm biased but I have to counter this - if you don't trust a host with something simple like a domain name (which can always be retrieved through Nominet/top-level registrar should the host go bust), why are you trusting them with your website?

There is the occassional case of somewhat dubious hosts who go bust and have registered domains in their name, but even in this case Nominet can be helpful. If it's a non-uk you could be stuck however.

But this is a non-issue - of all the hosts I know (the ones that are real companies, not a kid in a bedroom!), all register domains in their clients' names and wouldn't dream of doing otherwise.

Hosting is a minefield purely because you're trusting people you've never met (I always find this the strangest part of what I do - I've met less than 1% of our clients in person, even those spending significant sums), essentially, your entire online presence. But like any other purchase, ask around, do your research, and you'll be fine

 

[bdw]

For about 4 years I have been recommending some of my clients to UKWSD (http://ukwebsolutionsdirect.co.uk/) and I have been very impressed by the service they offer. On the odd occasion when I have had to email them to ask for help they generally get back within 30 minutes.

I am a designer and I have no affiliation with them.

 

[emailblaster]

Hi

We use: www.agl-host.co.uk for all of our sites, we have about 40 sites with them and I've always found them very reliable and pretty cheap.

Kind regards
Jamie

 

[LandingNet]

We've used 1-and-1, fasthosts and Heart-Internet for hosting and have found Heart to be fantastic with both their service level and support. As we're a reseller for them too, we're offering their 'Business Package' for half the price they do to UKBF members

Discount code in my signature

Shaun

 

[SneakSMS]

I have used www.fast2host.co.uk for quite some time now and have always been happy with their service.

UK based, decent support, decent relationships with customers.

No affiliate link, genuine recommendation.

 

[Dwebs-Ltd]

The more I read about hosting the more confused I get. We have a website which is on the verge of being published. Our designer uses 'United Hosting' and he says to maintain the site at £10 pcm I need to transfer the name? Our domain name is registered with '1&1'. Our designer says that if we host it elsewhere we are responsible for any problems.

Be careful I've seen it many times where the designer forces the client to use their host and gives the client no access to the site code. Then in the case I've assisted on the designer has either gone awol and not paid his bill to the provider or increases the hosting price and refuses to let the client have the site code and content.

I'm not saying it will happen but there are many designers and developers who use hosting to boost their income i.e. they charge next to nothing for the site design and development but bring the cash in on the hosting £20-30/Month for something which could be hosted for <£50/Year.

 

[Dominic Taylor]

Be careful I've seen it many times where the designer forces the client to use their host and gives the client no access to the site code. Then in the case I've assisted on the designer has either gone awol and not paid his bill to the provider or increases the hosting price and refuses to let the client have the site code and content.

I'm not saying it will happen but there are many designers and developers who use hosting to boost their income i.e. they charge next to nothing for the site design and development but bring the cash in on the hosting £20-30/Month for something which could be hosted for <£50/Year.

This is something which needs to be clearly listed in the contract for the design work - ownership of the site/code. Personally I would always advise that the clients are able to take regular backups of their account, and are allowed their own hosting account to prevent this situation. But on the other hand, keeping the client's account within your own reseller account is very handy in terms of preventing them breaking things and blaming you.

We also see cases of an AWOL designer or of a breakdown in relationship between designer/client, even legal threats to us as operators of the server. It's very messy and more than outweighs the designer's desire to keep things together in my opinion, so think carefully before signing anything.

 

[GeekSRV]

The more I read about hosting the more confused I get. We have a website which is on the verge of being published. Our designer uses 'United Hosting' and he says to maintain the site at £10 pcm I need to transfer the name? Our domain name is registered with '1&1'. Our designer says that if we host it elsewhere we are responsible for any problems.

I am hearing a lot of bad reviews about '1&1' which concerns me as we have ov er 40 domain names registered with them and another 10 with 'Heartinternet'.

The website we have is currently a brochure but will be an ecommerce site.

Anyone care to comment or offer any advice?

Thanks

Geoffrey

Technically he is correct, if you host with someone he's not familiar with then he won't want to get involed in problems, if he has his own servers or uses someone elses then the likely hood is that he understands what he can do on those servers and what he cannot do - such as what PHP modules he can use.

You could still keep your domains with your current registrar just change the nameservers to his provider/hosting setup if you wish to obtain help from him, that way if it goes sour you can just move on without being held to ransom. Just remember there are charges for transferring certain domains such as .com/.net's

United Hosting themselves have a very good reputation within the industry.

 

[Dwebs-Ltd]

This is something which needs to be clearly listed in the contract for the design work - ownership of the site/code.

Even if that's done the designer / developer would still have to release the code if they pull the plug on an ecommerce site the customer would be out of business until they can get a court order forcing the designer / developer to release the site.

We have had cases where that has happened, its hell and as a host there is little that can be done without the relevant paperwork.

 

[happyoutdoors]

Hi Guys,

What I find is that my situation is so complex that by the time I've worked out what to write in a post, I get logged out and all the info gets lost. Because I'm sick to death of asking our designer why he has not done this or that, the whole process which has already taken over 7 months, I just want to get hold of him and throttle him. AArghh!

 

[SneakSMS]

Hi Guys,

What I find is that my situation is so complex that by the time I've worked out what to write in a post, I get logged out and all the info gets lost. Because I'm sick to death of asking our designer why he has not done this or that, the whole process which has already taken over 7 months, I just want to get hold of him and throttle him. AArghh!

Why not write it in a word document, perfect then ctrl + c -> ctrl + v

 

[Optegris]

And you bumped a four year old thread for that???

 

[jimjamuk1]

We always tell our clients to keep their domains away from their web host.
You never know what's around the corner. We have some space on our Rackspace servers if you are interested. Also offer an online shopping cart service which is also hosted on Rackspace.

If there is anything I can tell you about either, please let me know.

I would 100% agree. For a commercial website I would never use the same company for domain name registration that I do for hosting.

 

[Optegris]

I would 100% agree. For a commercial website I would never use the same company for domain name registration that I do for hosting.

The reason being?

 

[antropy]

I can recommend www.pickaweb.co.uk very highly.

 

[martinesdur]

Antropy, could you please describe why would you recommend that host?

 

[zigojacko]

Can anyone recommend a good one?

That's an impossible question to answer without knowing your requirements...

You get what you pay for with hosting. If you sign up for some £4 - £5 per month package, then expect to face a number of limitations further down the line, whether this is no ability to fine-tune your server configuration to suit your ecommerce platform and website requirements or capped limits on database sizes or web space.

What ecommerce software will I be running?
Do I need managed hosting with 24/7 support?
Does my website need or will benefit from a dedicated environment?
How much traffic does my existing website receive?

It goes without saying, that any decent web hosting should be reliable, stable, robust and flexible.

What is your reason for specifying UK based by the way? You want support in UK timezone or you want servers to be located in UK?

We have servers in multiple UK locations, in Amsterdam and in multiple locations in the US. We only offer bespoke hosting packages highly tuned and tailored to individual client requirements with the ability to upscale/downscale with ease as and when needed. We often manage our clients domains at our registrar, look after domain transfers, DNS and mail as well as offer dedicated hosting for our ecommerce clients (I'd go as far as disagreeing with those that say it's best to keep domain separate from hosting - we have an absolute nightmare trying to change nameservers for domains that aren't under our control).

I'd say we're a "good" hosting provider but then, you might require a specific type of server set up that we don't specialise in...

 

[MikeGreen]

I would have to recommend UKFast -- they have always be excellent with regards to customer support.

 

[antropy]

Antropy, could you please describe why would you recommend that host?

Yes of course.

I've hosted with them since about 2005 and their service over all that time has been fantastic. They have great uptime, they respond very quickly indeed to support tickets, even when raised out of hours.

I remember raising tickets late on a Sunday night for a project and getting the issue fixed straight away. With some hosts you can find the out of hours support to be sub-standard, but not here.

Everyone who replies to a ticket has clearly read the whole ticket and is very knowledgeable in their area.

They also recently did the migration of a big site for me with hardly any downtime at all (we're talking a couple of minutes) which I was very impressed with.

 

[martinesdur]

Thanks for sharing your experience. There're not so many providers offering excellent customer support and mostly negative feedbacks getting companies with the poor relationship with customers.
I'm using webhosting service from euro-space.net and also would like to recommend their services to anyone, looking to host small or medium size website.
Their support is exceptional - fast in responses, very friendly and with professional knowledge, available all time round the clock. They also helped me in migration of 4 different websites completely free of charge.
Hope this would be useful to someone looking for a reliable host.

 

[Press48]

As a personal recommendation and on the back of a number of colleagues having hosted with them, I would recommend clook.co.uk - they are by no means the cheapest, but they have an exceptional uptime record, have been in business for over 10 years and their customer support is on a par with RackSpace (if not better).

Hope this helps!

 

[zigojacko]

As a personal recommendation and on the back of a number of colleagues having hosted with them, I would recommend clook.co.uk - they are by no means the cheapest, but they have an exceptional uptime record, have been in business for over 10 years and their customer support is on a par with RackSpace (if not better).

Hope this helps!

Have to agree with this recommendation, we've hosted a number of times with Clook and they do have an exceptional service.

 

[martinesdur]

Good to hear that. Just wondering if anyone else has/had any relationship with euro-space.net ? Thanks

 

[ThamesTeaCo]

After reading many recommendations on here for Vidahost I moved my hosting from 123 Reg (don't go near - terrible) to Vidahost. Vidahost managed the migration of several websites of mine seamlessly and have been swift to respond to my queries even at the weekend. My experience with them so far has been very positive. My site is also noticeably faster and I have not been notified of any downtime at all (monitor through pingdom).

 

[That Guy]

After reading many recommendations on here for Vidahost I moved my hosting from 123 Reg (don't go near - terrible) to Vidahost. Vidahost managed the migration of several websites of mine seamlessly and have been swift to respond to my queries even at the weekend. My experience with them so far has been very positive. My site is also noticeably faster and I have not been notified of any downtime at all (monitor through pingdom).

I have been using Vidahost for around 3 years now and their support has always been amazing. If you do have problems with your site the best place to check first is the Vidahost Status Page. Will save you wasting time opening a support ticket.

I also monitor with Pingdom and have it set to check the site every minute