Web hosting

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  1. BristolBachelor Gold badge

    Web hosting

    First off, this was the only area on our forums that I could think to post this.

    I am looking for a reasonably reliable web host (UK / Spain / Europe with support in English). I would truely love to have a dedicated server (then I could also run my own webmail and avoid my problems with hostedmail), but I'm not making any money out of it yet; it's early days and the cheapest I've seen is £35 a month, and that's too much (and it's also with the same supplier I have now).

    I have my hosting with a well-known company who I won't mention just now because I don't want to antagonise them; I want them to be fixing my bloody hosting :(

    My hosting is only with them, because it's the company I bought my first domain from when Demon internet said somthing like £5M to buy a domain name!

    1. Minty

      Re: Web hosting

      bytemark.co.uk or hetzner.de/en or rackspace.com would get my vote.

      bytemark because they're a solid little uk outfit with an approach i like, and you can get savvy engineers on irc for support. Used them for years. See also bigv.io. Not used it, but sounds whizzy, if a bit pricey.

      hetzner 'cos the price of some of their dedicated servers is just nuts. I know of a couple of clued up users who've been happy with them for a year or two at least.

      rackspace cause if it's good enough for El Reg ...

      1. BristolBachelor Gold badge
        Thumb Up

        Re: Web hosting

        Thanks Minty. I'd had a quick look at the Rackspace website already. I had already heard the name, and if they are good enough for El Reg, then obviously they're too good for me worth a look.

        It seems that the support people I spoke ill of earlier have realised that the machine hosting my site is doing a RAID rebuild, so might be a little slow, but it appears that they didn't realise until I kept asking what the hell was going on. I suppose that at least something cloudy should be able to at least move to another host if it's hardware is upset, but I'm not sure. I mean what happens if the slowdown is due to a disk outage in the cloudy storage!

        I'll have a look at bytemark too, but I am realiseing that I really am at the very cheap end of the wedge and this thing will have to start pulling in money to justify what some of this stuff costs. Oh, and yeah Hetzner's servers are silly prices; although still a bit rich with no income :(

        Again thanks for the help. I'm a bit sad that none of the commentards have joined in, but the user forums are still a bit of a backwater compared to discussions about CDs and naked celeb pics!

      2. benjymous

        Re: Web hosting

        I'd add my +1 for bytemark - they really are awesome guys

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Thumb Up

        Re: Web hosting

        I'll second hetzner.de - we've rented a dedicated from them for 5 years or so now (OpenSUSE).. Excellent support who all speak English and responsiveness is very good too, even on weekends.

      4. beardman
        Thumb Up

        Re: Web hosting

        Hetzner FTW! Best price, responsive support (good enough English), has IPv6, fast connections to major ISPs.

        Happy Hetzner customer for a number of years.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Web hosting

      You don't want US or Canada - for regulatory reasons?

      1. BristolBachelor Gold badge

        Re: Web hosting

        Hi Drew

        Well really I wanted UK because it would be in English, and since I'm tech support having it hosted over here in Spain would just make things even harder (since I don't really know what I'm doing). Also since about 90% of visitors would be in Spain and 10% UK, I thought that local presence would be easier

        I've also heard of people getting screwed over by the US, so was a bit wary. And I don't just mean for hosting DVD rips or selling fake viagra. Almost everyone over here (Spain) is called Jose something or Luis, so closing someone's website because their name was Jose Luis ..... and it is the same name as a suspected terrorist is just plain wrong!

        If you (or anyone) can recommend someone in the US / Canada (Trevor?) then I can have a look there too.

        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          Re: Web hosting

          There's Terabyte in Edmonton: good people, no question. Datacenter at the bottom of the CN tower here; more fibre than a glass plant.

          10dollar.ca offers hosting, I've used then for really minor stuff, no problems whatsoever. If it's a small/low bandwidth kind of thing (and legal!) I might just be able to toss it on one of my servers here. ("Mail the author" or twitter @egeekconsulting.)

          Really, it's all about size and scale. I have some Big Data contacts, I have "well, it has to serve some static Web 1.0 content and gets two visitors and a goat" kind of contacts as well. The key is to have both DNS (easydns, no questions, see my article,) and hosting be not in the US. Problem is, even if they appear to be canadian/spanish/U.K/etc...in a lot of cases, they maintain hosting nodes in the US.

          Not cool.

    3. TeeCee Gold badge

      Re: Web hosting

      UK2? Support not only in English, but they fairly recently insourced their support to, er, England IIRC. They always seem to get a round of approving noises from the commentarderie whenever they get a mention here too.

      "Support in English" can easily mean "supported by muppets who speak something resembling English from a call-centre in India".

  2. dogged

    Go with Amazon, I'd say.

    You could get a free Linux server or even a free windows server 2008RC2 (clicky) and then point your domain wherever you want.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    JustHostMe. Cheerful enough for what it costs. Had a client's site on there for a couple of years with nothing much in the way of problems.

  4. danielwalewis

    VPS

    Do you need the full resources of a dedicated server when you could get a virtual server? I can only imagine how poor dedicated hardware would be at the sub £35 mark (surely that cost doesn't even include any sort of management).

    At that price, you could get a decent MANAGED VPS, or a cracking unmanaged VPS which will be on much better hardware.

    I can highly recommend Vidahost for a managed VPS https://www.vidahost.com/servers/overview/virtual-dedicated from personal experience (UK based, all UK staff, great team).

    Unmanaged, RackSRV http://www.racksrv.com/virtual-private-servers, or even a premium VPS from Burst http://burstnet.eu/premiumvps.shtml.

    Please note I am currently hosted with Vidahost, but have no other affiliation. None of the links provided are affiliate links etc etc.

    1. Arrrggghh-otron

      Re: VPS

      I would put forward VMPort as a cheap VPS/KVM. Plenty of bandwidth and more than enough oomph to run a light to moderate load web server and webmail.

      I use the smallest VPS as an MX backup for my own personal DSL hosted mail server and am impressed with the offering for £4 a month... choice of data centres in the UK, DE and hardly worth mentioning... the USA. Be warned that the UK data centre hosting the servers was blocking port 25 a while back but it was easy enough to get the VPS moved to DE.

      http://www.vmport.com/

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I have use a great hosting outfit...

    ...but it's in Australia. All support (not that it's needed) is by local staff. The downside is that the $Aus is very high so may not seem such good value to people overseas. It's VentraIP if you want to have a look.

  6. Real Ale is Best
    Go

    I'm using Linode

    Great virtual server, and a very good DNS management system (if you want to use it).

    Also supports IPv6.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Re: I'm using Linode

      +1 for Linode VPS. No connection, other than satisfied customer for about three years now

      * Cheap as chips [cheapest plan is $19,95/month –whatever that is in real money?]

      * Choice of datacentres [including London]

      * Choice of Linux distros

      * [and if you're a Fanboi] iOS app to admin your VPS on the go

      1. KHobbits
        Linux

        Re: I'm using Linode

        Linode has some really decent hosting. When I signed up to Linode originally, they didn't have the London DC, so I did a bit of chatting to people on their IRC help channel (currently over 400 users).

        After spending a few minutes talking with the happy customers in there, and doing a few speed tests to pull from some of the offered test files, I found Newark data centre offered fast enough speeds to Europe for my purposes. And infact if you were looking to host websites with a global audience I'd still recommend Newark.

        Few perks:

        Really nice web interface, you can roll out a really nice selection of premade images of distro's ready to go, and manage thinks like DNS from on panel.

        Full root access, and running on XEN software, so you don't get silly shared burstable ram, and can do anything you want to the box.

        More help than you could ask for, their 'linode library' has guides to set up a huge range of services, their customer support is fast, and has a huge community online with helpful souls.

  7. Richard C.

    Memset

    I recommend memset.com - UK hosting and support, dedicated services and VPS accounts: so they'll be something to fit your budget. I've been with them for over 5 years now (at the moment, I have 1 dedicated and 2 miniservers/VPS with them, but at one point I also also administering 4 web heads with 8Gb RAMbehind a load balancer and 2 database servers with 16Gb RAM each: along with the 3 other boxen), so I've got experience of how good they can be.

    1. Graham Dawson Silver badge

      Re: Memset

      Seconded! Their miniservers are an absolute blast and I believe they've just set up their own cloudy storage and such system, though I've yet to look into it in detail. It seems pretty good.

      Highly responsive support team who help out at all sorts of times and with all sorts of self-inflicted problems, extremely reliable service, pretty good cost and they don't skimp on things like bandwidth or storage either.

      1. jbl

        Re: Memset

        Thirded!!! V. pleased with their virtual servers and their support.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not 1&1

    ... Having just lost an entire ecommerce site (web content, products, orders, customers) because of an 'upgrade' to the hosting package.

    'Upgrade' apparently means 1&1 will wipe out your site.

    'Daily backup' apparently means the site will be irrecoverable.

    Nor does the 60 day money back guarantee apply to existing customers. Which is nice.

    So I'm currently looking for someone else.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Try 2020media.com

    Been using them since they started out with a 'hobby' Linux server on a shelf. Now they can do you your own server, VM instance, hosted CMS - pretty much whatever you decide you need.

  10. monkeyfish
    Thumb Up

    http://orchardhosting.com/

    They're cheap, small, uk based, and respond to customer emails promptly - sometimes even in the evenings.

  11. Caff

    http://www.register365.com/hosting.html is cheap but no dedicated server

    http://www.blacknight.com/ no price for dedicated server you have to contact them for a quote but a vm is €18.99 a month

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Krystal, OVH (or http://www.kimsufi.co.uk/), PC Smart Hosting.

    All great companies, had products with all of them. Currently got a small hosting package with Krystal, they're excellent, mainly used OVH for domains, also brilliant and PC Smart Hosting offer a dedi for £40 p/m and they're also great.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Or xenSmart if you're looking for a VPS - it's from the same guys as PC Smart Hosting.

  13. BristolBachelor Gold badge
    Thumb Up

    Thanks to all commentards!

    Well, I'm going to have to thank you all for your posts, and I hope that they can help others too. Drew has to get a big thumbs up for pointing everyone this way too; the number of posts here has more than doubled in a couple of hours.

    To give an update on my situation; I'm happy now. I'm on a shared server because it was sufficient, cheap and didn't need me to spend time learning (remembering) how to set-up a Linux VM. The site is a fairly simple one running on WP with few page views, so doesn't really warrant even a VM yet. In addition, it is early days in a venture that has so far cost thousands and made nothing, so the hosting had to be a cheap solution. Thanks again to all.

  14. 808

    Vidahost

    Take a look at Vidahost (http://www.vidahost.com) . Prices reasonable (though havent shopped round for a while) and service excellent.

  15. Flash_Penguin

    Newnet

    Human Engineer support who you can call.

    That is all.

  16. Tim Brown 1
    Pint

    I can recommend the company I use, Poundhost. We rent a couple of low-end dedicated servers from them at around the £35 mark each. I did splash out on a one-off cost to have 4GB memory rather than the standard 1GB and upgraded the disks to have 2x250GB in a raid-1 configuration.

    Their support is decent, tickets generally get an in initial answer well within an hour although as with all support it sometimes takes a bit of communication to get everything sorted completely.

    The OP doesn't say what type of site/application he's looking for hosting for. I find that a lot of hosting problems arise from people expecting too much for their money. If you're looking to run say a busy site or complicated php application on shared hosting for a few quid a month then you have to expect to run into performance issues now and then.

  17. Nigey

    ICUK

    ICUK for me: (www.icukhosting.co.uk)

    I have many sites hosted with them for three years or so, both Linux and Windows, very reasonable prices and superb intelligent and friendly support.

  18. ItsNotMe
    Thumb Up

    Gate.com

    Not in Europe...but very good.

    http://www.gate.com/

    Been using them to host my business website & e-mail for over ten years. Rarely a problem, and when there was, it was rectified very quickly.

  19. Mark Allen

    http://othellohosts.net/

    I've been with them for almost a decade now. Have dozens of clients there too. Darn fine quality of hosting. Lots of different packages and options. Been almost trouble free in that time. The techs are helpful and fast to reply to tickets. The accounts department is intelligent and can deal with complex issues. NO off shore call centres scripts or buck passing - you talk to the people who actually run the company.

    The two occasions that there has been a DDoS there was plenty of information pouring out of their Twitter feed. Honest descriptions of what was happening and how they were fixing it. See the UK2 story in today's news about the BS they are spinning with their DDoS attack and you soon realise how good it is to have an honest company to deal with.

    And I would also put some extra votes down to avoid 1&1 and Fasthosts. Have have nothing but pain with those companies. Lots of BS from the support. Always had to migrate my clients away from them. Always beware of "cheap" hosting - you get what you pay for.

  20. dotslash

    5quidhost

    Free and cheap reliable services from http://www.5quidhost.co.uk/

    I use the free stuff, no complaints here.

  21. Lghost

    tidyhosts..ask for Ian

    Used them for UK hosting for SEO GEO reasons..very efficient, very reasonable prices, made to measure service.. and they answer their phones and emails fast when you need "tweaks"..

  22. teaPotHandle

    Web hosting

    I've used www.layershift.com for some years and have recommended them to friends, receiving only positive responses to their experiences.

    Layershift offer a variety of packages for various budgets and their customer service is some of the best I have ever experienced.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    vps hosing

    google it you can get lot of websites for this

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  26. badra100

    hi guys

    thanks for the info...is helpful above shearing.I wish to thank you all for the kind comments.

  27. EWhite

    No I don't have any idea about other web hosting but I was impressed with Waxspace.com shared hosting service. They have used firewall of Cisco ASR 9001 .. I am very satisfied with their reliable servers and exceptional customer service. Thumbs up to their support staff, they listened to my request, responded with speed and professionalism far beyond my expectations and continues to deliver an great service at a more than competitive and reasonable price.

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