Looking for a reliable (and fast) UK shared host

Portal Home > Knowledgebase > Articles Database > Looking for a reliable (and fast) UK shared host

Posted by tarbyonline, 04-30-2017, 01:47 PM
Hello Everyone, Newbie here (didn't realise this place existed or I'd have been here a long time ago). I recently moved my main website to 1&1 from a legacy account I have with Surpass in Orlando dating from 2007. Its nearly renewal time at surpass and I'm not keen on spending $60 pa on an account that is just hosting email! At present I'm on the bottom tier at 1&1 and apart from some down time everything has been fine. However, I don't really want to be paying £4.99 + VAT plus the cost of additional SSL certificates after the initial year is over! Going forward I would like to move everything over to one account and be able to implement SSL on the domains and subdomains (LetsEncrypt would be fine - its more for SEO than anything, theres no credit card info or anything like that). Ideally I wouldn't be paying any more than £50 a year and the server (and support) would be located in the UK. I'd probably need 5-10gb of space max, though I'm not too sure about bandwidth - since moving to 1&1 I've been using Amazon CloudFront for images, etc. I will say though that many of my visits come together at the same time when I publish a news article and promote through social media, so the host should be able to handle this. One of the main reasons for moving from 1&1 (apart from cost and a would be to use an encrypted CNAME for the CDN. Its a pretty small website from a traffic perspective, to date its peaked at 15,000 monthly views, but I'm looking to grow that significantly. Probably best to put what i need into a bullet list: [*]UK Based support[*]European server location (ideally UK or Ireland)[*]SFTP, SSH, etc[*]MySql[*]Cpanel (while I have warmed to the 1&1 interface a little, I consider Cpanel a must)[*]SSL / HTTP 2[*]Ability to add SSL for domains and subdomains free of charge[*]PHP 7.x[*]10gb space (to allow room for growth)[*]Good level of speed (I'm not expecting dedicated server levels of performance!)[*]Daily backup[*]Full support for Wordpress (including W3 total cache support) - auto updates and acceleration would be a bonus[*]Email accounts for all addon domains[*]5 addon domains (plus sub domains)[*]Max cost £50 pa inc vat after any promotional offers[*]Free migration I think/hope thats everything covered. With my current rate at 1&1 being so low I don't mind paying for that account and the new account until I can get transferred over. For those interested the current website is niferry.co.uk. I was nearly going to try 24host but can't find much in the way of information. Host on a rope is tempting with their 50% off through this forum as well. I have considered site ground but I think they are probably out of my price range once the initial year is over (looking for a host to move and stay with).
Posted by XiNiX, 04-30-2017, 02:13 PM
Welcome to WHT. This is indeed the best place to find what you are looking for. Your Budget seems to be perfect for a Shared Web Hosting Plan. How many Wordpress sites do you plan to host ?
Posted by tarbyonline, 04-30-2017, 02:22 PM
Thanks. At the moment it is just the one WordPress site with the other domains used for email. Theres a vague chance of a second site, but that is a year or two away at least! Forgot to thank everyone in advance for their help, so thanks in advance everyone for your help!
Posted by XiNiX, 04-30-2017, 02:27 PM
Please Check the Hosting Offers section. I recommend going for hosts which have cpanel with litespeed. This should be quite sufficient for you.
Posted by tarbyonline, 04-30-2017, 05:38 PM
Quick update. I've been researching both on here and on google - things have certainly moved on a lot since 2007 (thanks XiNiX for opening my eyes a bit). At present I'm looking at "Host on a rope" from here (though their website isn't exactly informative), TSO hosts (no idea if they use apache or other but their premium plan seems to tick a lot of boxes), and Smart Hosting (though they seem to have merged with Kristal and it looks like they may be having problems merging the 2 together going by recent reviews, besides they are too expensive). Any thoughts or experiences people would like to share on the above? At present I'm minded to go with TSO host.
Posted by nkawit, 04-30-2017, 05:46 PM
Well, I am always up to hear how we can improve our site. Last edited by ursa-musculus; 05-04-2017 at 09:13 AM.
Posted by tarbyonline, 04-30-2017, 06:13 PM
I'm actually in the process of signing with you for a year using the on-site discount code as at that price (£16 for the year) I may as well give you guys a try, if not for the main site (just yet ). I think the economy plan will do for now anyway - I can always upgrade when the site grows and it will give me a chance to get a feel for cpanel again! Great to see you guys actually read the posts (rather than just post adverts). Last edited by ursa-musculus; 05-04-2017 at 09:13 AM.
Posted by nkawit, 04-30-2017, 06:20 PM
Thanks for the kind words tarbyonline. I hope you enjoy your stay! Last edited by ursa-musculus; 05-04-2017 at 09:14 AM.
Posted by tarbyonline, 04-30-2017, 06:29 PM
Thanks. Having a bit of an issue with Visa Securecode (now theres a surprise!) at the moment. Forgot to say, the problem with the site was down to the fact that I was on the site were the billing takes place rather than the customer facing site in your sig, as I just clicked the link in the thread in the offers section. For anyone else wanting to take a look at Host on a Rope, use the link in nkwit's signature rather than the one in the offers section (but don't forget to copy the discount code though)! Last edited by ursa-musculus; 05-04-2017 at 09:14 AM.
Posted by nkawit, 04-30-2017, 06:33 PM
Ah , I think thats the More Info vs. Buy Now link. The More Info takes you to the product page, the Buy Now to the product selection. I'll see if I can improve on this.