Web hosting?

bigdave

bigdave

Well-Known Member
I currently have 2 business starter hosting packages with Heart Internet which together cost £70p/a. I can only host 1 site on each package and there's no MySQL so no cms of any type.

The likes of GoDaddy (I'm using them as an example) can offer packages for £40 p/a which includes multiple domains, multiple MySQL databases etc.. (to match this Heart Internet would want £180p/a). I know the customer service with this type of company is awful but there's got to be a half way house? Somewhere between excellent service, features and good value?
 
I've been using 1and1 for years with no issues.

They have hosting for a similar price point as you are looking at and can provide plenty of mysql databases and storage / bandwidth.

I have the Business plan but even the lower plans are of a pretty decent spec / value.

They are also the biggest hosting company and your site data site backed up in 2 different data centres each in different locations.
 
I've been using a mix of fasthosts and rochen for the last five years and had no issues with them, if you need more robust package for CMS support then take a look at rochen, all of my joomla sites are on there.
 
DigitalYak said:
I've been using a mix of fasthosts and rochen for the last five years and had no issues with them, if you need more robust package for CMS support then take a look at rochen, all of my joomla sites are on there.
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Hi All,

Can I just ask if your web hosts migrate, set up and maintain your clients sites for you. Do they do things like setting up control panel, accounts quotas, disk space , emails, etc? I think I have made a blunder by thinking that that is what they can do for me. It seems that they expect me to do this.

Are their any hosts that offer this service or have I been living in cloud cookoo land? Any responses would be really useful.

If you are familiar with sorting these type of things out would you be able to help? I am with Site5.

Thanks guys.
 
I get a feeling that the only way you'll get what you want from a host is to pay someone a small fortune. Most hosts will migrate a site for you but after that you're on your own with setting up emails, user areas etc...
 
Hosting companies provide server space and technical support of their kit goes wrong, that's about it I'm afraid. Other than that you are usually on your own as regards accounts, sites being set-up, emails etc.
 
Thanks for getting back Big D.

Fair enough, but how did you manage to get around your issues? Who is the someone that I have to fork out money to? It may be worth it. I haven't come across anyone that offers the service.
 
Corrosive said:
Hosting companies provide server space and technical support of their kit goes wrong, that's about it I'm afraid. Other than that you are usually on your own as regards accounts, sites being set-up, emails etc.
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Hi Corrosive,

Looks like I haven't done my research very well. I saw from your website that hosting is something that you offer your clients. Would you be able to offer a hand via skype. I will pay you for your time of course?, If not are you able to point me in the direction of someone that could help?

Very much appreciated? Thanks
 
The problem with a lot of the hosts mentioned is that they aren't UK companies and don't even have UK servers.

If you're targeting primarily UK visitors then your visitors will get better performance and you'll in turn rank better if you go for a UK based web host.

Heart Internet aren't the worst of the large names but they do massively overcharge for things that should come as standard such as MySQL databases, email accounts and so forth like the other big names. They typically charge a low base rate and then slap on lots of extras for things that don't really cost them anything (like additional email accounts). You can get better performance and service for the same price or less because you're effectively subsidising their massive advertising budgets.

£3 spent with one of the very large names is probably half going to advertising.

I'm obviously biased here but in my opinion you're going to get far better value for money - with better performance and service from a medium sized web host.

If the host is too small then they may lack the infrastructure to provide a reliable 24/7 service, but if they're too large you normally find overcrowded servers, non standard proprietary control panels, and far worse performance and less personal service.
 
bsugar said:
Hi All,

Can I just ask if your web hosts migrate, set up and maintain your clients sites for you. Do they do things like setting up control panel, accounts quotas, disk space , emails, etc? I think I have made a blunder by thinking that that is what they can do for me. It seems that they expect me to do this.

Are their any hosts that offer this service or have I been living in cloud cookoo land? Any responses would be really useful.

If you are familiar with sorting these type of things out would you be able to help? I am with Site5.

Thanks guys.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if you're still looking at this but it sounds like what you're looking for is a managed service.

Companies do offer this but it can cost a fair bit depending on what you want.

We've offered this free for charge for our clients opting for our Enterprise eCommerce Hosting package, which is £20 per month.

So we'd keep one website up to date - e.g. if it were a Magento site or Wordpress site, we'd take care of the technical side beyond what a web host would normally deal with - such as upgrading to new versions.

A decent web host will normally migrate a website free of charge, and setting up the control panel and so forth is standard and part of that.
A decent web host will probably also help you set up some email accounts, but you'd then be expected to add future email accounts yourself now knowing how to do that using the control panel. However if you were to go for a more managed service like the one I mentioned then that'd be something that can be done for you as well, along with adding new FTP accounts, dealing with spam and viruses and so forth.

That certainly isn't the norm however. We don't even publicise that service ourselves.
 
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