Domains and Hosts - who to choose?

lawtz04

Hi guys

Im just starting a little business to run alongside my normal job (to start with at least). I have brought a website template, edited it and have chosen my domain name. However I havent brought it yet as I am not sure who to go with. 123reg, godaddy? Anyone have any advice? I need an email address too.

Thanks
Si

MercilessKiller

I couldn't recommend enough A2 hosting...

I use them to host my own blog but they have unlimited storage and bandwidth for pennies a month so I also use them for my backups.. I actually got my domain from godaddy though I'd recommend just using A2 for both:

$5.56/mo after 30% discount
with coupon MAYDAY
LIMITED TIME ONLY - EXPIRES 5/31/10

That's from the home page...

Definitely go with an American company as disk space is pretty much free over there at the moment (yet quite expensive in Europe). With transatlantic connectivity these days you won't experience high latency even with using a US hosting provider

Hope that helps!
http://www.a2hosting.com/

fitshase

I use 1and1 and have had no problems at all.

Mr_Oink

Be wary of 1&1, many of my customers tell me they have the worst customer support known. They have pretty, big, glossy adds to draw you in :-) They are also said to be spam friendly and lots of admins - me included - firewall off all of the mail servers. This can give you reliability issues with email delivery - so be careful.

If you are starting out and you've already registered your domain these people offer free hosting: http://www.freebeehosting.com/ Interestingly enough their 'free' package is as good as - if not better - than many of the shared hosting packages I see for £5-£15 per month. That said, their free server is a busy server with lots of customers on it, and it does have outages from time to time.

HTH

chunter

123-reg has an excellent control panel for controlling domains. Never had to phone them, because almost everything's in there.
For hosting I'd recommend bigwetfish.co.uk. Been with them 4 years now. 20 odd websites. Support is very quick. Seen a lot of other hosts and they all have quirks...
I wouldn't go with an American host for one reason. If you're website's down when you start work at 8am in the morning here, it's only 3am over there (east coast). It may be lunchtime before you even get an acknowledgement.

Especially if it's a website which changes daily.

BigWetFish give you a min 10 SMTP/POP3 email accounts for each hosting package. So you can send and receive emails using your own domain rather than a tacky hotmail/google/yahoo email address.
EG if your domain name is packet.co.uk you can send and receive emails as joseph@packet.co.uk or whatever.

Mr_Oink

The only thing missing from 123reg's DNS panel is the ability to support DKIM - but that's a relative minor for most people. Telephone and ticket support is always good, accurate, timely and helpful.

bskelhorn_2

I have used both 123 and 1&1 and i would recommend 123 as mentioned before 1&1's customer service is appuling.

Another one I would recommend and I am using them at the moment is justhost.com, if you are going for the "green" angle they offer off-set servers and you can display a badge on your site to say you support this (little extra per year). Great support as well.

TimothyEBaldwin

What domain do you want your domain to be under? (eg .co.uk)

googler

I use namesco (UK based).

Efficient billing, decent customer service, a couple of small hiccups at the start, but in the main, a good, reliable choice.

KillerWatt

Krystal Hosting works for me.

Completely UK based, and I have yet to find another web host that can offer what they do for anywhere near the money.

corbyboy

Definitely register your domain name with Godaddy. They are very cheap, easy to manage and they are a big name that will be around for a long time. Also, ensure that the domain name gets registered in your name. There are lots of cheap companies that will register your domain name and put themselves as the domain owner. As you can imagine this becomes a nightmare if the company goes out of business.

But definitely don't host with Godaddy. Their plans are not good value and the account features are severely limited. I may be jumping the gun a little, but I presume you understand the difference between registering a domain name and hosting a website?

You will get a different recommendation from everybody you speak to about hosting. Personally, I use Rails Playground because they have good features for developers.

The right host for you depends on what exactly you want your website to be able to do. If you can post some specific requirements maybe somebody can recommend something specifically for you.