Web hosting suggestions?

[Clive Page]

I help to the run the website and event-booking database for a small club. For about 7 years we have used TSOhost who were fine for some time, but a couple of years ago they were absorbed into the GoDaddy empire. Prices went up, service levels went down and we have at least one problem which they seem unable to solve.

Any suggestions for competent web-hosting at a reasonable price, preferably based in the UK or at least Europe? I've had one suggestion of Hostinger who look as if they might be ok.

[Bob Henson]

I used Penguin in Cardiff to host my domains and website for some time and had no problems at all. Customer service and advice was good.

[Jeff Gaines]

I use Mythic Beasts:

Been very pleased.

[Alan Lee]

Krystal are good.

[Theo]

+1

Been with them about 20 years, absolutely no problems, they are always very helpful.

Theo

[The Natural Philosopher]

Why not rent a virtual private server and build your own? I pay around £72 a year with gigatux.

Enough space for a dozen web servers

Or you can have a simple web server for a couple of folding ones a month.

[Tim Streater]

I recently switched to them on advice from here and they seem a lot better than what I had before. Meanwhile my wife continues to get Waitrose emails from JohnLewisBroadband which supposedly terminated all its services at the end of June. Except now they say it'll be 7th August.

The irritating thing is she has to continue to pick up mails from there, rather than just stopping doing so, because as long as the server apparently stays up, anyone who's forgotten that she told them to send her mails to different address, won't be getting a bounce.

Anyway +1 to MB.

[Robin]

I switched the few domains I manage to them when TSOHost became expensive and have also been very pleased. But I switched them at the same time to email hosting only so can only vouch for good uptime, good comms and good prices. May be not so good if you want 24/7 instant access online support.

[Roger Mills]

Can't she have them automatically forwarded to her new address?

Incidentally, my choir website is hosted by NetNerd, which has always been ok.

[Chris Green]

Mythic-Beasts' support is pretty good in my experience. I've not tried asking questions in the small hours but have always had satisfactorily quick answers at other times.

Hostinger has been good too.

TsoHost now only have 9-5 weekdays support!

[Mike Clarke]

I've been very happy with

We switched to them about 3 years ago after Tsohost deteriorated. I think Stablepoint was set up by by the guys who ran Tsohost back in the days when they were good.

[Theo]

This blog post explains why: no support staff.

Theo

[RJH]

OOI, is the changeover quick/easy? I have a couple of domains that I manage for others and they won't be too happy with a prolonged downtime . . .

Mythic Beasts looks a fair bit cheaper than my current provider, Heart. No complaints at all, but I woudn't mind saving some money, and trying out Wordpress.

[Robin]

<snip>

It was seamless for me following their recommended method

but NB I didn't move the websites.

[Jeff Gaines]

I moved one of my domains from Heart to Mythic beasts as Heart had a spat with Yahoo and all my emails to Yahoo addresses were returned as spam.

Heart said there was nothing they could do about it.

[Chris Green]

Follow the 'how to move a domain and hosting' in the Mythic Beasts support files and it should be possible to move almost transparently.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Te changeover should be seamless. In technical terms you build the new web servers and test them using different domain address - so if your old servers are on

you set up and transfer the old server to that and test it.

when it works, you change its internal name to

and move the DNS records so that points to the newIP

Over a periodi of less than a week all users will pickup the new IP address and you can decomission the old server

Wordpress is a well known attack surface. I'd build your own server if you have the ability - all these 'hosted' servers are a bit s**te, really. Because the methods of logging into them are well known and subject to exploits.

[The Natural Philosopher]

They lied of course. I recently had the same. I changed my DNS records to say 'yes, this IP address is authorised to send email on behalf of these domains'

Whoever you were using as your DNS provider for your mail domain should already have done that or notified you how to do it.

[Mike Clarke]

And seriously consider installing the free Wordfence security plugin

It provides very effective protection against hack attacks.

[Theo]

Supposedly they are now insisting on a paid licence, according to the reviews?

Theo