Need to move hosting solution

[blueball]

I currently have about 5 domains hosted by UK2; 4 of them are simple redirections while the other one is full DNS hosting.

After many years of satisfactory service I have had 3 outages this year so far because their DNS server refuse to accept that they are doing DNS lookups for my domain. Yesterdays outage was allegedly resolved via online support but by this afternoon I still had no connectivity. A quick online chat this afternoon and within seconds they had kicked their servers into replicating my DNS details and emails started arriving - very annoying as they said they had done it yesterday.

I'm getting pretty frustrated with this so I'm looking to move somewhere where the solution is more stable.

Any recommendations?

[Wooglie]

http://www.vidahost.com/

[blueball]

I emailed a complaint to UK2 today and to be fair they responded quickly. Regrettably the completely avoided answering the question I asked which was "What are UK2 going to do to ensure that every time my domains are renewed they do not get dropped from your servers?". Despite responding several times asking them to answer this they kept telling me what I could to stop this happening (have auto renewal enabled and keep payment details up to date) so as far as I am concerned they can't even be bothered reading the question properly to answer it. I have told them they have lost a customer and I am definitely looking elsewhere now.

[blueball]

http://www.vidahost.com/

Thanks will check it out.

[tfboy]

I'm using TSOhost and highly recommend them. When I've had issues (my fault), they've got back to me within 30 minutes, even on Christmas day Freephone telephone support and easy to manage via cpanel.
I used a voucher code to get their Pro Linux package for around £15 for the first year. But at £50/year for multiple domains up and running, it seems a good deal to me considering you get multiple MySQL databases + all the usual web addons + proper email and imap and proper ssh shell access. Plus they're a smallish company so you can speak to real people easily. I started with fasthosts and that was a shuddering experience!

http://www.tsohost.co.uk/linux_webhosting.php

[Wooglie]

Thanks will check it out.

No problem. Let me know if you are thinking of using them as I think they have a 10% off voucher.

[blueball]

I'm using TSOhost and highly recommend them.

Thanks. Will check that out too

[BlackDwarf]

Another +1 for TSOHost here.
Great customer support when needed. (my fault)

[Odc]

I've been using QiQ for a few years now. Great service from them.

[bledd]

+1 on QiQ

I only use them for webspace, but it's great

[blueball]

Thanks guys. Going to be doing a lot of reading I think.

[Saracen]

I used QiQ for a while for a small job, and had no problems or complaints. Then again, it was a very nominal usage and I didn't challenge their capabilities at all.

One thing I would say is that there are a lot of sites out there that appear to be offering very good value for money, but I have a couple of caveats.

First, I'm very leery of "unlimited bandwidth" offers. Bandwidth costs, and it's rather like a water company offering you unlimited water .... and not telling you the pipe they use is 1mm in diameter. Sure, the water is unlimited in that they don't charge by the gallon, but it'll take you a week to run a bath.

Secondly, there are companies that appear to offer very good deals, and indeed, for a while, do. But if you've an even modestly-demanding website, how good will service be over time. It seems that a lot start out with half-decent performance, while their servers aren't heavily loaded. But in order to give those dirt-cheap deals, their business model is to load the servers up rather more than they are really capable of sustaining so performance starts out fine and that lasts a while, but then it drops and drops as server load increases.

The question, therefore, is how important getting decent performance from a hosting company is? If it's a personal vanity site with a few family photos on it, the answer may be "not very". If, on the other hand, you're running a business from it or it's a site simply where your business customers have access, then performance is more of an issue.

Finally, it's not just the server performance that matters, but customer service and tech support. When you have a problem, does it get sorted out in a few minutes of an hour or two, or does it take a week to resolve? And if the latter, does it matter?

Sadly, many of these questions are very hard to answer, short of the old "suck it and see" method.

[blueball]

Fortunately I don't need web hosting as I run my servers at home I just need the name hosted and the DNS capabilities.

I'm torn between DynDNS and Vidahost at the moment.

[Saracen]

That'll teach me to read the post a bit more carefully, won't it.

I blame it on this headache. Yeah, that's it. Headache.

Phew, I think I got away with that without anyone noticing.

[Disturbedguy]

That'll teach me to read the post a bit more carefully, won't it.

I blame it on this headache. Yeah, that's it. Headache.

Phew, I think I got away with that without anyone noticing.

Fail, you could have gone back, deleted your original post and made it look as if blueball was talking to himself

[Agent]

evo hosting are excellent - can't recommend them enough