Free Reviews of Top Website Hosting Companies

Every internet site needs web hosting either on a dedicated server or shared host somewhere in the world so that visitors can access the information and interact with your business.

Read this background information on what type of hosting you may need and reviews of hosting companies we have used and recommend.

The Type of Hosting You May Require

Depending on how serious your internet venture is and how many people you believe will be dictate what type of hosting you require. Almost all cheap hosting accounts are on shared servers which means your site is with hundreds, perhaps thousands of other sites. Some of these may be spamming the internet which means the actual server gets banned in the search engines and you may wonder why your rankings have tanks and it's actually nothing to do with you at all.

Where Should it Be Hosted ?

Where a site is hosted can sometimes affect not only search engine rankings but performance. If you have a site hosted in the USA and most of your visitors are in the UK the requests to the server and the replies to show on your visitors screen will go over many internet cables to get the answer and if you are adding a few seconds to send your requests over the Atlantic and back all the time it can impair the user experience.

With the search engines they won't know if you have a .com domain and hosting in the US that actually they should show it in the UK results. To be on the safe side host your website in the country where most of your visitors are based.

Dedicated or Shared Server ?

Although dedicated servers have come down in price they are still expensive. The basic deal is the server will not come with any support and won't be managed in that if the server goes down then it's up to you to get it going again. As most of us business managers know nothing about the technology you'll need it to be managed and this is where the cost escalated.

Most hosting companies use Dell computers as their servers and can offer good prices but once you've added the management fees on top you'll likely not get change out of £100 per month. Anything less and you may not be getting the service you really require.

Shared servers are very inexpensive but as mentioned above you will be on a server with many other hundreds of websites. On the whole this is fine and is reflected in the low cost of ownership. You can get shared hosting for just £10 per year and these are very good - see below for some vendors.

How to Choose the Right Hosting Supplier

This can be very difficult to understand and it's not just a case of typing in "best hosting provider" or "reliable web hosting" into Google because they may not be top because they are good. As with most other services in life it's always best to get recommendations from other users. Even asking in some of the business forums who would people recommend generally just gets replies from hosting companies so it can be hard to choose if you have never hosted a site before. But use the forums in the first instance if you don't know anyone with a website.

Hosting Reviews

These reviews are from our own experiences. In fact we have never had a real problem with a hosting company. Nearly all of them have had down time and most have been difficult to get hold of when one of our sites has gone missing in action but on the whole over the past 10 years or so these have all been reliable hosting companies with excellent support. Go over to their websites and check them out.

BetterWebHosting

We have had one of our sites with better web hosting for 4+ years now and have never had a problem. We are able to contact the owner almost instantly and his servers are based in the UK. The hosting to be on a shared server is just £12 per year and you can pay by paypal. Highly recommended.

Webhosting.uk.com

We needed a dedicated server when the current incumbent let us down badly and searched online and came up with this group. The one thing that swayed our minds was that they seem to have a large team of technical experts and you can talk with them using online chat. They moved our existing site from the previous host over to theirs in a couple of hours and during the whole time we were online with their chat service and being handed over to different engineers whilst all this was progressing. The server is just £99 per month fully inclusive of VAT and management. Highly recommended.

Other Hosting Solutions

We have found other companies that host our websites that have excellent customer support and great prices that are all based in the UK. Here's the list to check out:

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