Fastest Host in the UK?

[Jenny Julian]

We have a UK host we found from here several years ago. It was a very fast host but it is now slow compared to what it was. I think there was a server change or it become too popular and over worked.

Anyway it seems to be time to move to find a faster solution in the UK.

Does anyone know of a fast UK host where we can transfer our hosting panel with less than ten websites and about 30 domains etc?

Is there a speed of UK hosts comparision somewhere?

Ideally one where we can speak to someone for help if there are issues. We do pay for management services with the current host.

 

[Darren_Ssc]

Is there a speed of UK hosts comparision somewhere?

There are lots but they tend to be affiliate sites and will be biased towards those companies that pay a comission.

What kind of sites do you have and what's your budget?

 

[zigojacko]

Just as a side note....

Many people don't understand how to accurately analyse the speed and performance of a web server and test a website and if it loads slowly, just put that down to poor hosting.

In 99% of cases, it is poor websites that are loading slowly and is actually nothing to do with the server stack. The other 1% are all using GoDaddy, 1&1/IONIS, Hostgator or TSOhost (and all of their subsidiaries/sister companies).

Food for thought...

 

[Awinner2]

I use SiteGround for all my sites and they have just added Amazon London servers to their global chain network. Not only fast (I get 94-98% when tested by Google Sitespeed tester) but a great support team if you run into problems (as I do usually caused by me!)

 

[Jenny Julian]

We spend estimated £50 to £100 every month on the hosting and domains and extra services.

Our wordpress sites are about UK legal services with no shopping carts etc and rate average B on GTmetrix and are all wordpress sites but the site load time is not 3s or less it is much more. 10s and 20s on two sites and average 5s on the other five sites.

Most of the sites are new sites using a very simple theme written by wordpress themselves and these are the ones that get B or A-. Even these simple ones have a very slow backend and are not lightning fast which i think means under 3s.

We have even turned on cloudflare and have litespeed switched on and set it up. I can share the GTmetrix short form report on all the sites if it is of interest to anyone?

Take your points on GoDaddy, 1&1/IONIS, Hostgator or TSOhost. Useful information.

We are considering these UK host providers with first one at top of list presently:

1. ezpzhosting
2. wpengine
3. wpxhosting
4. nimbushosting
5. siteground

These were all mentioned on reddit in the last 2 years in good terms.

 

[Awinner2]

We spend estimated £50 to £100 every month on the hosting and domains and extra services.

Our wordpress sites are about UK legal services with no shopping carts etc and rate average B on GTmetrix and are all wordpress sites but the site load time is not 3s or less it is much more. 10s and 20s on two sites and average 5s on the other five sites.

Most of the sites are new sites using a very simple theme written by wordpress themselves and these are the ones that get B or A-. Even these simple ones have a very slow backend and are not lightning fast which i think means under 3s.

We have even turned on cloudflare and have litespeed switched on and set it up. I can share the GTmetrix short form report on all the sites if it is of interest to anyone?

Take your points on GoDaddy, 1&1/IONIS, Hostgator or TSOhost. Useful information.

We are considering these UK host providers with first one at top of list presently:

1. ezpzhosting
2. wpengine
3. wpxhosting
4. nimbushosting
5. siteground

These were all mentioned on reddit in the last 2 years in good terms.

According to SiteGround.co.uk they currently host 2,000,000 domains that suggest that they know what is required to be successful in their marketplace?

 

[fisicx]

We spend estimated £50 to £100 every month on the hosting and domains and extra services.

Looks like someone is pulling your chain. For that sort of money you should be getting a better service than you are. Looks like you are on a cheap shared server.

I use these guys: https://hostinguk.net/

Never had a problem with speed. Sites all load in well under 3 seconds worldwide.

 

[zigojacko]

According to SiteGround.co.uk they currently host 2,000,000 domains that suggest that they know what is required to be successful in their marketplace?

Don't agree.

All of the biggest and richest web hosting providers in terms of revenue and customers are also the worst because they focus specifically on quantity over quality and flood their space with advertising. Same applies for DIY sitebuilders like Wix and Weebly - massive customer base, absolutely abysmal websites, and still millions of businesses around the world sign-up to them every year.

 

[fisicx]

According to SiteGround.co.uk they currently host 2,000,000 domains that suggest that they know what is required to be successful in their marketplace?

Nah, just means they are good at marketing.

 

[Darren_Ssc]

We are considering these UK host providers with first one at top of list presently:

1. ezpzhosting
2. wpengine
3. wpxhosting
4. nimbushosting
5. siteground

These were all mentioned on reddit in the last 2 years in good terms.

Have you considered splitting the load depending on how critical performance is for all sites?

For example I have a bunch of sites on Siteground which I, like Alan above, have found to be quite good for wordpress hosting; especially since they include a few optimisation features for no extra cost. On the odd occasion I've contacted support they seem to have a good knowledge of WordPress specifically, which is not common with most other budget hosts. I wouldn't host a critical site here though simply because the support can't be top class at this price.

For more important sites I use Kinsta who are based in the US but you can select a London data centre. Like site-ground, the sites are hosted on Google Cloud but are also highly optimised.
Support is very fast and they really do know wordpress inside out. It will cost you just shy of £100 to host 5 sites though, hence why I suggest splitting.

I would also recommend not using the same provider for hosting and domain management, the potential for system failure is too great.

 

[gpietersz]

We spend estimated £50 to £100 every month on the hosting and domains and extra services.

For that amount you can get a cheap dedicated server or a fairly good VPS.

£100/month might even cover replacing the management services depending on your needs and what the current host actually does.

I entirely agree with @zigojacko 's comments above. Its often the site that is the problem: most often slow to load external resources, but with Wordpress its often a slow plugin. Also the biggest providers are not the best for the reasons he explained.

 

[Alan]

We have a UK host we found from here several years ago. It was a very fast host but it is now slow compared to what it was.

I'm guessing here Vidahost - which became TSO host. Yes they were fast when every one was spouting on about them a few years ago, I had a client site on them once, but they change from great performance to awfully slow quite quickly after takeover.

Many people don't understand how to accurately analyse the speed and performance of a web server and test a website and if it loads slowly, just put that down to poor hosting.

I do. When I last moved my portfolio of sites I did extensive testing in variety of different manners and load profiles. And tested like for like from legacy to proposed.

I found a really fast UK host with decent support.

But I'm not going to tell anyone - I don't want them ruined....

 

[Barry_M]

Have a look at Rapidswitch. I have been using them for years with hundreds of websites with no issues. (i have dedicated servers with them)

 

[Jenny Julian]

We are running a full set of speed metrics at GTmetrix right now. Some of the simple sites that are quite new are doing well but our two main sites are doing poorly.

When we login to the wordpress backend it used to be fast but last year our host changed its servers and its been slow since then. This makes us the think the service is slow as it is our main interaction but GTmetrix is showing up that of our several sites only two are slow (our two biggest sites). We have paid the host to fix up each site but its taking some time and no results yet.

 

[Jenny Julian]

Just to say our host is a good company that as looked after us but its probably time to move on. Don't want to name them as that's not fair and they are good. We just want lightning fast again. Also it may be our fault not theirs. Its taking a long time to work out how to resolve it.

 

[Jenny Julian]

Have you considered splitting the load depending on how critical performance is for all sites?

For example I have a bunch of sites on Siteground which I, like Alan above, have found to be quite good for wordpress hosting; especially since they include a few optimisation features for no extra cost. On the odd occasion I've contacted support they seem to have a good knowledge of WordPress specifically, which is not common with most other budget hosts. I wouldn't host a critical site here though simply because the support can't be top class at this price.

For more important sites I use Kinsta who are based in the US but you can select a London data centre. Like site-ground, the sites are hosted on Google Cloud but are also highly optimised.
Support is very fast and they really do know wordpress inside out. It will cost you just shy of £100 to host 5 sites though, hence why I suggest splitting.

I would also recommend not using the same provider for hosting and domain management, the potential for system failure is too great.

This is really good advice thank you! I will be looking into both Siteground and Kinsta now as good contenders. Can I ask what domain management you recommend? We have mainly dot co dot uk domain names and use google suite for email with all email being forwarded to one domain.

 

[Darren_Ssc]

This is really good advice thank you! I will be looking into both Siteground and Kinsta now as good contenders. Can I ask what domain management you recommend? We have mainly dot co dot uk domain names and use google suite for email with all email being forwarded to one domain.

I route all domains via cloudflare. You can upgrade from free to pro per site for $20 a month for a few added features such as comprehensive firewall and image optimisation but the free option is pretty good - for the price.

I also use gsuite for main email account.

 

[Ian J]

I have no idea who is the fastest host in the UK but I do know who is the fastest milkman in the West if that is any help

 

[webhostuk]

You should try a host offering SSD server, Litespeed with there latest quic cloud, We have personally tested it really fast you can check for details : https://blog.webhostuk.co.uk/what-is-quic-cloud.html. If all this optimization are done correctly and the provider does not oversells then all should be good for you.
Just curious are you looking for shared reseller hosting or VPS server?

 

[Alex Calinov]

We have a UK host we found from here several years ago. It was a very fast host but it is now slow compared to what it was. I think there was a server change or it become too popular and over worked.

Anyway it seems to be time to move to find a faster solution in the UK.

Does anyone know of a fast UK host where we can transfer our hosting panel with less than ten websites and about 30 domains etc?

Is there a speed of UK hosts comparision somewhere?

Ideally one where we can speak to someone for help if there are issues. We do pay for management services with the current host.

As some of the others members have already mentioned, it might not be the host. It might be the website.

However, if you're certain it is the host, here are 3 options I recommend:

1. Shared Cloud Hosting - guru . co .UK
2. Or if you want to manage your own server, and have all the resources for yourself, have a look into Cloudways together with a Vultr High Frequency server.
3. If you're looking for something more premium - have a look into Kinsta.

 

[NickGrogan]

How much traffic are you getting?

Those load speeds are really slow, you should be able to get below 1 second on pagespeed with Wordpress. If the sites are busy, this could be part of the problem.

 

[gpietersz]

Google has an improved replacement for Pagespeed. If you are worreid about site speed this looks pretty useful: https://web.dev/measure/

There is an explanatory blog post: https://blog.chromium.org/2020/05/introducing-web-vitals-essential-metrics.html

 

[NickGrogan]

I saw a few changes in the search console, I guess its related to this.

Testing is mobile by default which is interesting.

View report link doesn't work for me.

 

[gpietersz]

The report links stopped working in the last half hour or so. A bug or capacity problem, I guess?