Web hosting provider

chris667

Hi-

I'm new here. Looking forward to meeting you all! I can tell there's a lot of knowledge here, and I look forward to learning new things.
I work for our family's company (not telling you which one - no advertising!) and I need to find a new hosting provider for our website. The service from our last one is a joke. They are a nightmare to deal with if there's a problem, really unhelpful, and they make you jump through untold hoops to leave (writing to Germany!).

Can anyone recommend a decent hosting provider, UK based, who will accept payments by Direct Debit, be reliable, with and have decent customer service? I'm not necessarily interested in the lowest price if it all works well.

Thanks in advance-

Chris:cool:

clarkz

for me it has to be fast hosts. dealt with them before and have had nothing but good experience.

http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/

ingresman

supanames.co.uk have been ok with me, but I might try godaddy.com next time i need some hosting

scrungebucket

Hi try Simon on www.tobyhost.co.uk he hosts my site.

sleep2much

I use http://www.servage.net/ 510GB yes GB of web space if you like link through this and I get a free month if you sign up wink wink, http://www.servage.net/?coupon=cust41179
Oh, it's not UK based.... but very good, and fast.

Dime_Bar

You will have to check on DD with them but Strato are the most reliable and proffesional hosts I know. Click Here. I have used them since they came to the uk and for anything which I wish to be reliable I would not use anyone else.

cmrule

Try https://www.hostingindex.co.uk for comparing

timay_2

I've been using http://www.ehosting.co.uk for a number of years now & have never had any problems. Their customer support is very good & they have always been quick in helping.

BaritoneUK

We use Xcalibre Communications which are based in Scotland- https://www.xcalibre.co.uk
I've used them since 2000 and started on their mini shared hosting package (2 web sites). We now have a dedicated server with them. They aren't a massive company and so they have pretty good customer service. I'd recommend them. I did have a geographical equivalent of their evil 0870 number but I don't have it to hand...

chris667

I have looked at all of these, and have gone with Xcalibre. They send proper invoices like a proper business ought to. Their T&Cs say they will attempt to contact me by letter or phone as well as email if my domain is about to lapse. Leaving is just a matter of 28 days written notice - fair enough.
My experience with Lycos hosting has been hard work. My credit card which they had been taking payments from, had expired. Although they say they attempted to contact me by email, I never recieved one, the first I'd heard of any of this was when they transferred my domain to another company, with a website in German. In order to carry on using it, I had to agree to a set of terms & conditions, but as they were written in German, I refused to.
Next time I checked, the page had been registered to another company, which while supposedly not connected to this German registrar was linked to it on their home page. Now if you go to it, it's just parked by a company.
Customer service was an awful experience, they kept me on the line for ages and cost 12p a minute, as well as being totally unhelpful.
And now I find Lycos are still charging me £70 a year, because I haven't sent their cancellation form to an address in Germany within the last 30 days of my contract. When is the last 30 days of your contract? On the control panel page, it's really hard to find, almost like they don't want you to know.
I know that I should have kept my details up to date and checked their T&Cs, but honestly, it should be much easier to deal with them, and it should certainly easier to leave.
We're only a little business (me, my dad & my sister). I was thinking of taking them to small claims court and getting our £70 back, but really, none of us have the time to deal with these people.
Go with the little guy - if we worked like this, people would say we were crooked, and we'd go bust within a year.