I'm considering a few hosts, would be great to know of somebodys experiance.

[shuurajou]

Hi there,

Currently I have a website hosted with www.ukhost4u.com (on their business package) - needless to say, from what I've experienced, it wasn't only the name which was cheesy. I find FTP access very sluggish, the website goes down all the time, they even closed my website once and put adverts on it instead (at a time I was getting VERY high traffic), because they said I was getting attacks from China? It's like they wanted some advertisement done...

Needless to say, I don't want to stay with them anymore, although there deals were quite good, the reason why is now obvious to me.

I've been considering a few hosts:

http://www.34sp.com
http://www.2advanced.net
http://www.shanje.net

I've had experience with 34sp before, and it was good, but I would like to use someone different. I can se 2advanced.net would probably be the best, but they are quite costly. I don't really want to pay more than 60$ a month, but I want a fast and reliable host. Last time I put up an MP3 of a song I made I got bitten for it from ukhost4u.com for that - so a site that lets me host what I wanna host would be nice .

I want unlimited e-mail accounts, a good amount of free subdomains for my already purchased domain. I also want webmail, a good control panel (don't like shanje's alot) with a relatively sized webspace and decent amount of bandwidth (although it doesn't have to be as much as ukhost4.com - close would be nice). I also require full PHP, MySQL and all types of everything to be supported, although I do not care for ASP, so that's no biggy. I realise 2advanced.net is pricey but the quality seems extremely high.

Any recommendations or experience with these companies would be hugely appreciated. I like 2advanced.net's control panel a lot (just as a side note).

I hope you guys can share your advice.

PS> A UK host is preferred as I am located in the UK.

 

[edesignuk]

A Small Orange are fantastic. Amazing service/support as many here will vouch for, great packages and pricing, plus on each package everything you are after is unlimited (MySQL dbs, email, etc.). They also use cPanel X which is a brilliant control interface:

They are in the US, but this is better IMO. Weak $ means an already good deal for the yanks is even better for us with the exchange rate as it is.

I really can't say enough good things about them. Check 'em out

 

[thequicksilver]

Hasweb host my site. I find the value for money fantastic for what they offer, and have had an excellent time with the service department on the few occasions I've needed it.

It also uses the same cPanel X UI as A Small Orange which edesignuk just showed above. He's right, it's very good, and Fantastico especially makes installing complex web things like bulletin boards, blog scripts, image galleries etc a doddle. Thoroughly recommended.

 

[shuurajou]

A Small Orange looks real nice, there's on my 'good' list now . The only thing which does concern me is their location is in the USA. Nothing against the USA, but I with my previous host FTP response felt so sluggish; I don't know if my servers were based in USA, but it was mega slow. Speed is a huge issue to me. Can these guys handle heavy traffic and give top speeds? .

Something which concerns me is that A Small Orange doesn't look like they are contactable via telephone. That's a huge benefit to me if I can do that - am I mistaken?

 

[macmaniacttt]

http://hostultra.com

Been great for the past year!!

--david

 

[shuurajou]

Any other recommendations guys? I know that there's more web designers out there than this .