help wanted on selecting a web host please.

[gedtee]

Hello,
any views on selecting a reliable UK based web host would be appreciated.
My main requirements are:-
1. An easy to use. reliable web site builder included in the package. (Have used streamline and fasthosts offerings, but neither seem very good to me.)
2.Telephone support as well as email.
3.Bandwidth allowance, at least 10gb per month.
4.Webspace, not sure how much I need, but initially at least enough for 20 plus pages of mainly text and graphics.
5.Up to 5 tld domains. (not sub domains)
6. SEO and site submission.
7. Price is not my main consideration, but would hope to achieve my requirements somewhere in the £100 to £200 per annum range.
Thank you.

 

[temi]

gedtee,
Welcome to UK WW. You requirements are quite comprehensive, not sure I can think of a hosting company that provide all you requested, one hosting company I will definitely suggest you do NOT use it Heart Internet, there are utterly unreliable.

Good luck

 

[RiverWire]

Im going to be very unpopular with this one

Im going to recommend Godaddy hosting, yes thats right you heard me correctly, ill explain why !

1. always reliable and very rare if your site is down,if it is down its never longer than an hour.

2. very easy to use and great help from the support team although support can be a little slow at times, sometimes 5 - 12 hours for a reply from email ( you can call them though)

3. Farly cheap

4. THIS IS THE MAIN ONE ( last month on of my sites when mad and my bandwidth went through the roof, i was away so i didnt get the email in time from godaddy telling me to upgrade my hosting because i didnt upgrade my hosting it meant that they had to charge me for every 1gb i went over, so my total bill was nearly £1500 in half a month, i contacted them explaining what the problem was and i had a little trouble with their site when trying to upgrade hosting and they kindly cleared the whole bill

Very pleasing and would recommend to anyone, but i know some people have had problems with them, but with every service you buy you have to ask your self is it the company causing the problem or just incompetence of the customer ?

 

[temi]

RiverWire,
In addition to the short coming you identified on GoDaddy hosting, throw in the fact they are not a UK company (Hence now very good if you need UK IP address).
The post specify UK based so that disqualifies GoDaddy.

 

[gedtee]

Thanks for the replies temi and RiverWire.
Temi, I am currently with fasthosts, who I think are part of heart internet, so I will be ruling them out anyway.
RiverWire, godaddy is a non starter if it is outside the UK, but thanks for the reply anyway.

 

[RiverWire]

yeah sorry i over looked that in your conditions, serves me right for not reading the entire post and just jumping in and posting :cray:

 

[temi]

You may want to consider 1 and 1, this site was previously hosted with Heart Internet, the server kept crashing all the time so I move to 1 and 1, it has been relatively stable since the move to 1 and 1.
The are originally a German company but if you access their site via the .co.uk version your site will be hosted in their UK data centre with on UK IP address.

 

[gedtee]

Thank you for the reply temi.
Just looked at 1 and 1 , most of what I want in their business pro package, but for live telephone support I would need their professional package, which costs about £300 pa and is probably overkill for what I need.
Thanks anyway.

 

[huncyrus]

Hmm i look very good supporter (Belgien, Japan, American) on the hotscript [dot] com, if u like, look up for this site and see about the hosting section.

 

[deluxdon]

Give it a try to uni-hosts.com as i am using it.

DON.

 

[gedtee]

Thanks all for your input.
Temi, just found this site "webhostingunleashed.com", "heartinternet" has 1 positive review and 3 negative, "fasthosts" has 0 positive and 4 negative, "1 and 1" has 18 positive and 61 negative. Thought it may be of interest to you.

 

[temi]

Gedtee,
There is a member of this forum who swear by heart Internet as well, I but going by my personal experience (which many old members of this forum can confirm) when this site was hosted by Heart Internet.

Here is example of some of the messages I logged at their support desk:

Ticket Number:711180078 Created at:2007-11-18 21:23:56 Last Updated at:2007-11-19 21:31:31 Service:ukwebmasterworld.com Summary:sites are offline again Status:CLOSED On 2007-11-18 21:23:56, you changed the ticket status to URGENT and wrote:
My websites are offline again, this is about the 3rd time the sites would go offline this week. Is this going to be a regular occurrence and its certainly does not seem to be a one off problem.
On 2007-11-18 21:31:26, Darren Vickers changed the ticket status to CLOSE-PENDING and wrote:
Hi there,

Thanks for the ticket. Web85 was down for a short time but it has now been fixed and our engineers are monitoring the situation. My apologies for any inconvenience.

Best Wishes
Darren Vickers
Heart Internet Support

 

[xhan]

£100-£200?! tbh you could get all that including telephone support from a US based site for about £2 a month.

I recommend holdfire.net!

 

[temi]

£100-£200?! tbh you could get all that including telephone support from a US based site for about £2 a month.

I recommend holdfire.net!

Are they UK based?

 

[xhan]

Are they UK based?

no but I have issues with UK based hosts - mainly their extortionate prices!

 

[TEE06]

6. SEO and site submission.
. uk base host
If it wasnt for those 2 things i could have help you perfectly
website

------comment added by temi--------------------
Its not a good idea to recommend one's own company, plus he is looking for UK hosts, I know you are based in Canada.

 

[temi]

Thank you for the reply temi.
Just looked at 1 and 1 , most of what I want in their business pro package, but for live telephone support I would need their professional package, which costs about £300 pa and is probably overkill for what I need.
Thanks anyway.

I think its impossible to find the "Perfect host" that meets all your needs, there would have to be some trade offs.

From experience thought, "if you pay peanuts, you get a monkey" and sometimes you don't pay peanuts but you still get a monkey.

I am yet to find and excellent telephone support in all the hosting companies I have used over the years, I will say 50% of the time the answer they give you is wrong.

If loads of space is important to you, find a company that give huge web space and do not worry too much about the phone support if they respond to email support quickly.

 

[temi]

Give it a try to uni-hosts.com as i am using it.

DON.

He is looking for UK hosting company, are the company you suggested UK based?

 

[gedtee]

Thank you all for the suggestions.
Temi, I think you are right about meeting all my requirements, probably too tall an order.
Would you be able to give me your views, if any, on any of the following hosts:-
netcetera, supanames, uk2, krystal, strato-hosting?
Thanks.

 

[temi]

No problem gedtee,
Here are my takes on the hosting companies above.
- netcetera never had anything to do with them so do not have first hand info about them
- supanames - They are okay, I have used them before, I think the were bought by one of the bigger companies a year or so ago, I was quite pleased with their services for all the period I hosted with them
- uk2 - I will not touch them with a barge poll BUT this is based on my experience with them going back 7 or 8 years ago, things may have changed, but then they never answer their phone and response to email about 2 3 weeks later.
- krystal - Never heard of this company before.
- strato-hosting - Its a German or Dutch company, ensure your site will be hosted on a UK IP address. They are okay.

I hope you find the above info useful.