Finding a server for a business web site

SpannerMan · Post by **SpannerMan** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 10:25 am

Does any one here have experience with web hosts in the UK for small businesses?

It seems web hosting can be a bit of a minefield when it comes to business critical stuff, for example getting the load-balancing right. I hear you can get servers that automatically switch over to more servers to handle the load during peak time visits. Obviously the worst thing you can do is have your website crash, but it still doesnâ€™t make financial sense to keep paying to cover the estimated highest visitor count.

My friends plan to have lots of Flash animations (about 4Mb each), so the site is not just images and html.

Can anyone recommend for us where to start looking? If you have experience with web server hosts, preferably in the UK with some sort of business hosting package, let me know what you think.

Cheers!

Post by **betajaen** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 11:03 am

I've always tended to use American web-hosts but British domain registrars; I'm with DreamHost right now; it's nothing critical like your after but it's always worked. However; I have a secret project planned in the near future which will require it to be secure as humanly possible. I want to buy or hire server (or at least a slice of one) and have it in a hosting facility I've heard good stories from slicehost and that's who I plan to use when I start up this project of mine.

But if I was you; I would avoid big brand web-hosting companies that sling terms around as marketing speak and go with people who know exactly what they are doing and have a bit of human in them.

steven · Post by **steven** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 12:26 pm

We use the UK based http://www.ukhost4u.com for our oge website/forum/wiki and didn't have any problem. We "only" had a 1-2 hours of downtime in one year.

Btw they provide already most of the scripts that you could need (http://netenberg.com/fantastico_scripts.php) and they are not part of the "5 MySQL Databases".

Also read the blog from Sinbad : Searching for a UK dedicated host

Especially Sinbad's comment: "Legal issues mostly revolve around the server being in the US, and therefore covered by US law. If you hadnâ€™t noticed, the US is the most frivilously litigious society in the world. See the recent SpamHaus debacle: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0, ... 264,00.htm
Itâ€™s not a huge concern, but if some rougue company does decide to launch a baseless legal attack on us, itâ€™s a lot less complicated if we can say we have no operations located in the US. The UK legal system is considerably more sane and I feel much happier basing our operations there. Sorry if that slows down US downloaders, but hey, here in Europe we get the same deal using US servers (although Iâ€™ve never particularly noticed) so it all comes out fair in the end "

Good luck

SpannerMan · Post by **SpannerMan** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 1:06 pm

@betajaen: hmm, interesting company, cheers, will have to read more.

@steven: Good point, I remember now reading Steves post about the Ogre servers. He mentions a few contenders (Rackspace, UKFast and Dedipower) that he must have researched and cherry picked - I think I'll look into them too.

triton · Post by **triton** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 5:27 pm

betajaen wrote:I've always tended to use American web-hosts but British domain registrars; I'm with DreamHost right now; it's nothing critical like your after but it's always worked. However; I have a secret project planned in the near future which will require it to be secure as humanly possible. I want to buy or hire server (or at least a slice of one) and have it in a hosting facility I've heard good stories from slicehost and that's who I plan to use when I start up this project of mine.

But if I was you; I would avoid big brand web-hosting companies that sling terms around as marketing speak and go with people who know exactly what they are doing and have a bit of human in them.

Please don't go with DreamHost, they are very bad in terms of technical support. I had a domain registered with them and a web hosting package. Somehow they said I did something against the rules (I only used the storage to store school work and projects), banned my account, refused to let me download all my data and I had lots of trouble to get my domain back (had to pay for them to release it). You have been warned!

I also have heard good things from Slicehost.

Post by **betajaen** » Fri Aug 01, 2008 5:33 pm

Don't worry; I will be switching from DreamHost to SliceHost once my project kicks off.

lonewolff · Post by **lonewolff** » Sun Aug 03, 2008 6:43 am

betajaen wrote:Don't worry; I will be switching from DreamHost to SliceHost once my project kicks off.

Any hints as to what is on the horizon?

Then next big MMO or something bigger?

Post by **sinbad** » Mon Aug 04, 2008 11:08 am

Dedipower have been good to me - we had a few setup problems to begin with, but that was sorted out and they've been fine since. I've only had one instance of downtime in the lasy year and a bit (caused by their equipment rather than [D]DOS attacks or similar), which was a major switch failure. They were immediately on it, and phoned me to let me know when it was fixed, which wasn't more than about 30 minutes.

I get the impression they're a relatively small company and as such the support seems to be quite personal. Best of all, since they're in the UK you can just phone them up at local rates if there's an urgent problem.

Hosting in the UK is definitely more expensive than the US (especially considering the dollar is so damn cheap right now we can use it for lavatory paper). However the fact that my server is subject to UK law and I can honestly say I have no business operational presence in the US (useful for tax purposes as well as potential legal issues), plus the fact that I can phone a bloke in Reading if I have a problem, it's probably worth the cost if you're a business.

One disclaimer - Dedipower gave me 'Enterprise' support at the regular rate in return for an ad on ogre3d.org.