Hosting?

[Standfree]

I am in the process of taking over an E-commerce site and wish to move the hosting away from the present providers as I have read bad reviews on them.

Can anyone suggest a good uk based hosting company that could look after my needs ?

Regards

Derek

 

[TotallySport]

you need to give a bit more information on the hosting you require, but vidahost are my recommendation

 

[Alan]

As above, a bit more specific on 'needs'. What platform is your e-commerce on? How much traffic? Do you have any other special needs?

 

[Standfree]

The site is magneto based if that helps atall.

 

[Alan]

It helps me - never ran a magento site so I know what I don't know :| if you see what I mean?

What is it running on now (technically) is it on a shared host, or are you looking for a VPS or dedicated server? I have heard magento can be a bit heavy on server resources.

I know there are magneto experts on this forum, sure one will be along soon.

 

[Leo-InstallingIT]

If you are running Magento I would recommend getting a VPS or a specialist Magento host. There are a lot of tweaks that aren't implemented on normal shared hosting which speed Magento up, so a VPS gives you the ability to apply these.

Do you know what sort of space and bandwidth requirements you have (or what you have at the moment)?

 

[TotallySport]

you might want to take a look at this thread;

www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=287615

 

[mierzwin]

I host few sites here: safeukhost.net

Couple shared accounts and one dedicated server. So far so good after 1 year.

 

[dx3webs]

What you need is a host that specialises in magento hosting.. with full support....

 

[webhostuk]

For magento I will suggest go with hosting provider offering nginx webserver really helps magento sites load faster.

 

[dx3webs]

For magento I will suggest go with hosting provider offering nginx webserver really helps magento sites load faster.

Its a little more complicated than that.. there is a good post about this here :
http://www.sonassi.com/knowledge-base/magento-kb/mythbusting/why-shouldnt-i-use-nginx-for-magento/

 

[cocodude]

Everyone seems to be saying "Go to a Magento provider" but honestly, a web application is a web application at the end of the day. Sure, a host that specialises in Magento hosting could probably offer some information on tweaking performance, but the most important things for a host are a good reliability and support for the more basic things (e.g. a service going down), as well as a general understanding of how to get things working.

Also, I'd take comments about nginx with a pinch of salt as has already been suggested.

I agree with others that a VPS might be the way forward. Shared hosting is all well and good, and good if you're not really technically inclined, but Magento is a bit of a beast so a VPS with you own resources could suit you better. I would of course suggest GigaTux as we proactively make sure that each VPS performs well, as well as being pretty good at helping out even at the application level when things go wrong.

 

[dx3webs]

On the one hand you state that a web application is a web application but on the other Magento is a bit of a beast? Comparing Magento to say wordpress is lile comparing Notepad to Photoshop. Magento has needs.. in particular high processor speed and plenty of RAM. In the ecommerce world time (page load) does equal money. The faster the page load the more money you make.

Magento can work really well on shared hosting (sub second) .. provided your host know what they are doing and have tuned the environment for Magento and strictly limits the number of clients per server

 

[cocodude]

On the one hand you state that a web application is a web application but on the other Magento is a bit of a beast? Comparing Magento to say wordpress is lile comparing Notepad to Photoshop. Magento has needs.. in particular high processor speed and plenty of RAM. In the ecommerce world time (page load) does equal money. The faster the page load the more money you make.

My point is that a hosting provider should be able to gracefully handle whatever runs on their platform, from static HTML to something like Magento and beyond. Unless there is a real need to get stuck into Magento configuration or tailoring, you'd be hugely limiting your choice of providers if you only looked into providers specifically offering Magento hosting.

 

[toolsandtimber]

I agree that you don't need to look at specific ecommerce packages with hosts, just a good host will do.

We have used Vidahost.com for some time and have hosted Magento, Opencart and Wordpress sites all with no problems.

Previously we have used 123reg who were awful and other hosting providers who have retrictions on the amount of concurrent connections to the mysql databse, which is very bad!

We found Vidahost to be honest and helpful all the way.

i honestly don't work for them, I just found them great to work with.

You can use this code for ten percent off all their hosting packages '10-off'

 

[ITsoldUK]

I have used the same host since my inception and have no problems with them at all...Host It is the name of the company, give Andrew a call. Not affiliated just VERY happy with them.

...also, my article about choosing a host may help you => http://www.itsold.co.uk/itsold-blog/48-web-hosting-buyers-guide

Regards
Daren

 

[Phild1973]

Hi, I can recommend Yodel Creative for web hosting, their pricing is good and we've always had brilliant service.

http://www.yodelcreative.co.uk/

Good luck.

 

[davidgilham]

Vidahost all day long

Sent from my GT-I9100 using UK Business Forums

 

[davidhg]

I could recommend Storm Internet (I cant post a link as ive not been a member long enough). But google them.

They are UK based, EXCELLENT customer support.

They are not the cheapest, but when robust & reliable hosting is required they are the best I have found.

 

[Alan]

It is always worth checking is a host is host or a reseller of hosting

http://www.whoishostingthis.com/storminternet.co.uk

 

[davidhg]

They have their own support team

 

[Alan]

Yes they do. I'm not 100% certain if they are resellers of Eukhost or not or just have their home page hosted there, or they rent virtual or dedicated servers from them, who knows?

That is what reseller are though mainly, they provide the end user support and the 'main' hosting company provide the technology. Although you can get totally white labelled support too. In the world of the internet you never really know who you are talking to

 

[astutiumRob]

It is always worth checking is a host is host or a reseller of hosting

Good advice, but that tool uses cached databases that are years out of date, so take it's results with the usual pinch of salt.

You get more accurate information about where they host their own site (and what real hosts wouldn't host their own site ?) from a whois and traceroute to the ip

 

[ITsoldUK]

Good advice, but that tool uses cached databases that are years out of date, so take it's results with the usual pinch of salt.

You get more accurate information about where they host their own site (and what real hosts wouldn't host their own site ?) from a whois and traceroute to the ip

Or you could ask them?



Sent from my GT-I9300 using UK Business Forums

 

[Alan]

Yes, thank you for that, and it would seem that Storm do host their servers behind a generic ip provider that links some major datacentres, so it would appear they are a 'proper' hosting company.

By the way I have used 'storm' myself a couple of years ago and their support was very good then.

 

[That Guy]

Vidahost or TsoHost

Received great support from both, had great uptime and all hosted in the UK.

Currently using their Cloud hosting package but they also offer cPanel etc.