best web hosting
Choosing the ideal website hosting service is an exercise fraught with danger; it looks like a minefield out there with a myriad of offers, often similar and laden with obscure, confusing terms.
Generally speaking though, the first step you need to do is identify what your needs are (with an eye on future growth), then proceed to choose an appropriate plan and finally the web hosting provider to deliver it.
Going it the opposite way might tie you to the wrong provider or package as many of the companies vying for your custom are not household names and may not offer packages suitable for your needs.
Web Hosting basics
Web hosting companies usually offer four main hosting tiers, starting with the least complex (and the cheapest), shared hosting plans, all the way to colocation; in between are Virtual Private Servers (otherwise known as VPS) and dedicated hosting packages.
Other providers have arranged their offerings according to the targeted business segments (small businesses, e-commerce, artists, resellers), features (WordPress, email hosting, cloud computing, managed service providers) or platforms (Linux or Windows).
As always, value for money, when it comes to web hosting services, is not merely going for the cheapest. Other than sheer numerical values (the amount of storage, bandwidth, email accounts, site uptime, domains supported or provided), there's also non quantifiable parameters as well.
These include a wealth of features; money back guarantee, a control panel, online store, site builder, support (either on the phone or live chat), security, email marketing, anti-spam, loyalty discounts, flexibility, scalability and more.
Below are the top 10 UK web hosting services that we have identified as being the best value for money on the market at the time of writing.
For the sake of simplicity, we have limited our list to UK providers initially (those with a UK storefront with a UK phone number) and will include foreign companies that will comply with a number of ground rules like EU data centres, a right to cancel, a cooling period, a full refund policy and/or a free trial period.
1. 123-reg
123-reg started like as a domain registrar (hence the name) but rapidly expanded beyond selling just dotcom domain names. Its packages start from only £2.99 per month (Linux Essentials, payable yearly) and come with at least one free .co.uk domain name and 100 mailboxes.
All websites are hosted in a UK data centre and are therefore ruled by British laws. The secure facility is served by a 10Gb network connection with direct acces to major internet exchanges.
2. Heart Internet
UK-based web hosting means UK-based in-house support most of the time. It is the case with Heart Internet which promises all year free support that deal with issues in minutes rather than hours. Like for 123-reg, Heart Internet servers are hosted in UK data centres (the company is German-owned) and all packages come with ample space (from 5GB), bandwidth (from 30GB) and email boxes (from 1,000).
Its beginner package is called Starter Pro and at £2.99 per month (plus a £11.99 set-up fee) is idea for small websites and beginners alike. A novel feature is its smartphone control panel application that allows users to manage their websites and domain name from a smartphone or tablet.
3. Easyspace
One of the grandees in the UK web hosting and registrar landscape, Easyspace has been around for more than 18 years (having been launched in 1997). It has 10 data centres across the country and not surprisingly, offers UK based support, both via phone and online, like most of the competition.
It offers unlimited bandwidth on all its servers with free setup and 100% uptime guarantee. Its packages start from only £28.80 per year (for the basic Pic 'N' Mix) with 3GB space, no database or email accounts. You do get multi-year discounts, free Google Adwords credit (£75), free stock photos and a free domain name.
4. Planet Hippo
Easyspace's logo is an orange elephant while Planet Hippo's a hippopotamus; clearly there's a theme here. One of the smaller of the web hosting services in this listing, Planet Hippo has managed to keep its prices at a lower level compared to the rest of the competition. Its One Account Linux costs just £1 per month excluding VAT.
Its cPanel Unlimited is what steals the show though, offering "unlimited everything" for just under £3 per month. You also get a free domain with that package. As with other service providers, you get 30-day warranty, 24/7 UK-based support (but not by phone) and all of Planet Hippo's servers are based in the UK.
5. GoDaddy
The US-based web hosting company is one of the largest in the game and probably the best known one as well. It is also the largest domain name registrar in the world with tens of millions of domain names in its portfolio.
Its cheapest package, is decently kitted at £4.80 per month, rising to £6 after the first year. It is the most expensive in the comparison.
Like most web hosters, it comes with free backup and restore, an uptime guarantee (99.9%), unlimited storage (100GB for the Economy package) and bandwidth and a free domain with the annual plan.
A pretty nifty feature provided by Godaddy on all its package is the ability to increase hosting capacity on demand (e.g. when you experience a sudden surge in traffic) from within your hosting account.
6. 1&1
Oneandone is the other big web hosting player, vying with Godaddy for world domination, and is the biggest one in Europe. Located in Germany, it offers a bewildering array of services with prices starting from as little as £2.99 per month (excluding VAT).
While it doesn't provide with a lot of freebies (you don't get a free domain for example and you only get 10GB of storage), OneandOne makes up for it with a free web design software (NetObjects Fusion 2013), 24/7 phone and email support, a graphics archive, a 30-day money back warranty, transparent replication (they call it Geo-redundancy) and a whopping 300Gbps network connectivity.
7. UK2
Based in London in start-up territory (Shoreditch), UK2 offers the cheapest starting package of all the providers in the list at 99p a month (although you need to subscribe for two years). It also offers affordable unlimited packages with unlimited emails, bandwidth, free SSL certificate (great for improved security and search visibility), a free domain and a dedicated IP.
Prospective customers will like the lack of setup fees or hidden charges, the 30-day money back guarantee plus 24/7 UK-based phone support on a freephone number and UK-based data centres.
The web hosting packages from UK2 are available here.
8. OVH
This is a French web hosting company you probably never heard about but OVH is the third largest hosting company after Digital Ocean and Amazon with more than one million servers scattered over 10 data centres.
It also provides with web hosting services for as little as £2.03 per month with its Personal package offering unlimited traffic, a free domain name and even a GeoCache CDN (content delivery network) that essentially keeps copies of sites in different locations to slash the time users have to wait to access your website, increase redundancy and improve your search ranking.
9. Fasthosts
Fasthosts is another web hosting company that managed to thrive over the past decade, often adorning the back pages of our tech magazines. Based in Gloucester, the company, now owned by German giant, United Internet, states that it has UK data centres and offers free 24/7 phone support.
Like most of its competitors, it offers a 30-day money back warranty and all its packages come with unlimited bandwidth. It is also quite generous with a massive 50GB web space, £155 worth of online advertising vouchers and a free domain name. Note that paying upfront for three years slashes the price of the hosting to just under £4.60 per month.
10. One
One is different from the other web hosting company here as it pitches itself more as a web builder than a web hoster, encouraging potential clients to use its own web editor, one that doesn't require coding.
What's even more surprising is that it offers a year's free hosting (although you need to pay £10.80 for the initial setup) for its entry level package (one that still comes with a free domain name, unlimited email accounts and unlimited traffic). The company seems to focus exclusively on the shared hosting business and support is exclusively web-based, great when you are at your desk with internet access, not so much when you're away and roaming.
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