Website hosts

daizylindsay

daizylindsay

Suspended / Banned
Messages
360
Name
Anna
Edit My Images
Yes
I am going to create a website for my husbands company (small building company) and was wandering if any TP'ers had any recommendations for a free or cheap web host. I've googled a few but it becomes complicated quite quickly.

My needs are - simple but effective layout, contact page, unlimited photo uploads ( to show previous work ) company domain name, appear on google search with different key word searches.

Anyone have any ideas?
 
I've been with a company called Easily for a number of years and found no problems.

They can also provide a domain name which makes it much easier overall.

But whatever you do DON'T use free hosting for a business - if you're going to look professional you need a proper domain name and a site that looks professional.

As to Google and other SEs that's a matter of SEO and is up to you how you go about it as is layout etc.

.
 
Another vote for TSOhost, I've been with a few hosting providers and they are by far the best.

One other bit of advice is to arrange the domain name separately, I do mine through domain monster, the reason for that is that you can easily move hosts if you keep them separate.
 
Getting the site found on Google for a variety of search terms or any other search engine comes down to the skill of the designer and/or SEO specialist. You can learn it but it takes time and needs to be monitored.

Paid for hosting need not be expensive and will tend to give you better support than free hosting.
Make sure you set up email accounts based on the domain and don't use hotmail, gmail etc.
 
Or use Google apps if you like gmail interface. Which I find much better than typical we host email, and it's free!
 
As a website developer I have been through a lot of hosts over the years <G> I have been with Vidahost now for over 2 years, and cannot praise them enough.

Their tech support go out of their way to help you, even when it is nothing to do with their servers! Oh, and their support is in the UK!

As a bonus their servers are situated in the UK too.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thanks for all your replies I will take everything in and have a look at all suggestions. Fortunately my friend is available for the SEO bit!
 
I'm with unlimitedwebhosting.co.uk. Basic but you have unlimited domains, disk, bandwidth, SQL databases etc... £3.30 per month plus another £1 if you want a dedicated IP (needed for SSL certificates).

From your needs, you may want something a bit more managed as most of the hosting packages expect you to worry about search engine optimisation etc...
 
Harriers9 said:
Easily are expensive and their bandwidth allowance is minimal.

TSOhost all the way.
Click to expand...

Well Easily impose no limits on bandwidth apart from "fair usage" and their charges seem to be just slightly above TSOhosts for beginners but with extra disk space and free data transfer (subject to "fair usage") rather than 5Gb a month.

Swings and roundabouts really.

Let's face it these days it's more about reliability and longevity than cheapness and I've had various accounts with Easily for over 15 years and I'm quite happy with both.

.
 
After a nightmare with our previous hosting company we've switched to www.5quidhost.co.uk. They have been very reliable and their support has been very quick
 
There is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth.

If you use too much bandwidth they will recommend you upgrade to a bigger package due to the load on the server.

The word unlimited is a very shiny word and attracts a lot of people.

For those with websites, what is your monthly bandwidth? If you have a smallish site, I doubt you get close to 1Gb.

So ignore unlimited and go for reliability and support.

You also cannot really judge support until something has gone wrong. I was previously with a company who I thought gave good support when I had a question, they always gave quick replies with the answer. However when we had a hardware failure, we hit problems, 48 hours downtime and data lost from the site due to a poor backup solution they implemented. This wasn't on a cheap hosting plan, this was a dedicated server. We have very quickly jumped ship.
 
Dale_d3100 said:
There is no such thing as unlimited bandwidth.

If you use too much bandwidth they will recommend you upgrade to a bigger package due to the load on the server.

...

So ignore unlimited and go for reliability and support.
Click to expand...
Unlimited isn't just about bandwidth. The reason I was attracted to my current host is that I can have unlimited domains and sub domains and email addresses and SQL databases. That's far more important to me than unlimited bandwidth. There also isn't another package - the next step up is a VPS (and yes, I have considered getting one as it would sometimes be nice to have command line access on a machine that isn't here).

Although I do have unlimited disk space, I don't have unlimited FTP accounts (I have one per domain and an anonymous one per domain). I guess that's their way of making sure you don't dump loads of stuff on their servers.

As to your point on reliability and support - yup, I'm with you there, but much like insurance companies, it's difficult to tell. What I can say about unlimitedwebhosting.co.uk is they have answered my technical questions promptly and have fixed issues I've had. 24/7 tech support and all UK based....

The other good thing is that the minimum contract length is one month (I pay £3.30 a month) so if there are problems, I can easily transfer the website to another host quickly (domain names are with 123reg so it's only a matter of redirecting the DNS requests and allowing them to propagate).
 
petersmart said:
Well Easily impose no limits on bandwidth apart from "fair usage" and their charges seem to be just slightly above TSOhosts for beginners but with extra disk space and free data transfer (subject to "fair usage") rather than 5Gb a month.

Swings and roundabouts really.

Let's face it these days it's more about reliability and longevity than cheapness and I've had various accounts with Easily for over 15 years and I'm quite happy with both.

.
Click to expand...

These were my charges for a period in 2003/2004 before I left them for TSOhost:

[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]465510[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]17th May 2003[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]harriers-online.co.uk Virtual Data Transfer [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]495642[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]13th Aug 2003[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]harriers-online.co.uk Virtual Data Transfer [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]524071[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]4th Nov 2003[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]harriers-online.co.uk Virtual Data Transfer [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]563452[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]12th Feb 2004[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]harriers-online.co.uk Virtual Data Transfer [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]567383[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]20th Feb 2004[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]harriers-online.co.uk .co.uk 2 year renewal [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]612918[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]1st Jun 2004[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]harriers-online.co.uk Virtual Data Transfer [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]644771[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]19th Aug 2004[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]harriers-online.co.uk Virtual Data Transfer [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]674086[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]1st Nov 2004[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]harriers-online.co.uk Virtual Data Transfer [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]684812[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]28th Nov 2004[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-2]harriers-online.co.uk Virtual Data Transfer [/SIZE][/FONT]




One in detail: [FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1]Sat 17 May 2003[/SIZE][/FONT]


[FONT=arial,verdana,helvetica][SIZE=-1]Virtual Data Transfer[/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=arial,verdana,helvetica][SIZE=-1]£5.12[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1]------------[/SIZE][/FONT]
[SIZE=-1][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Total: £5.12[/FONT][/SIZE]
[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1]VAT @ 17.5%: £0.90[/SIZE][/FONT][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][SIZE=-1]------------[/SIZE][/FONT]
[SIZE=-1][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]Grand Total: £6.02[/FONT][/SIZE]

It all mounted up and in the end I pulled the plug. I have never been charged extra bandwidth with TSOhost even though it's exactly the same site, if much larger now, and cheaper.
 
Harriers9 said:
It all mounted up and in the end I pulled the plug. I have never been charged extra bandwidth with TSOhost even though it's exactly the same site, if much larger now, and cheaper.
Click to expand...
Whilst I can understand the frustration, the policies may well have changed in the intervening 7-8 years since these charges applied.
 
I'm still registered with Easily and looking just now the pricing is no different really. In my final year I paid £49 total for a years hosting. It's now £49.99 + VAT

The site was getting around 500 hits a day back then. Now it's over 1000 most days. I think I did the right thing.
 
Wow lots of information here, thanks everyone! Lots of food for thought. The website will just be a simple framework which will have background info, testimonials, gallery and contacts. The main objective is to advertise and attract enquiries and quote requests. The company is a family company and operates in a relatively local area, so I mainly want it to come up of people search "builders in ..." etc. hope that makes sense!

The company is vat registered and prices are not too much of a problem - but we are not expecting 1000s of enquiries!

Thanks again.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top