Web hosts

[directhex]

So, I always get annoyed by "suggest a web host" threads, because generally speaking, people don't need more than any old cheapo PHP hosting.

Then, last night, I checked my monthly bandwidth usage since I started syndicating my website onto a couple of blog aggregators:

Summary for February 2009
Total bandwidth used 	479 MB   
Total allowed 	3600 MB    

Summary for March 2009
Total bandwidth used 	3392 MB   
Total allowed 	3600 MB    

Summary for April 2009
Total bandwidth used 	4176 MB   
Total allowed 	3600 MB    

Summary for May 2009
Total bandwidth used 	3261 MB   
Total allowed 	3600 MB    

Summary for June 2009
Total bandwidth used 	5362 MB   
Total allowed 	3600 MB

... yeah. And we're only halfway through June. I think my hosts are gonna start having a go at me soon.........

So I need to start thinking about alternatives, in case the **** hits the fan.

Current hosting is a gradwell.net Developer account, which gets me the above 3.6 GiB a month of bandwidth, 3 GiB of disk space, shell access, and a bunch of MySQL databases and IMAP accounts. Oh, and PHP, of course. I'm paying about 12 quid a month.

Looking at those numbers, I think it's reasonable to assume I need to up my BW allowance to at least 10 GiB - maybe more for headroom. disk space isn't a worry right now, but I certainly don't want to lose out on the shell access and MySQL/IMAP. Oh, and ideally, I'd like some non-Windows ASP.NET hosting to play with, but that's hardly vital. And UK-based is preferred.

Any thoughts? I could even cope with VPS hosting, as long as there's an easy way to administer stuff I don't understand like subdomains.

[dave87]

I use QiQ, which gives you 100gb/month allowance of bandwidth, 10gb of storeage space. Not a clue on the other parts though...

[TheAnimus]

Something like this mabye?
http://www.memset.com/dedicated_miniserver.php

Gives more control, espesually if you ever want to use mono stuff.

[gss03]

We've started using Global Gold for a lot of stuff now.
No nonsense hosting/ VPS.

[Whiternoise]

Another +1 for qiq. Never had any downtime issues, and even their cheap package offers 10GB a month. They've often got offers on, so worth looking at.

http://www.qiq.co.uk/technology1.php

The £29.99+ packages give you SSH telnet access - not sure if that's what you want though.

One thing to note is that those are yearly prices - not monthly, which is pretty good value for money in my opinion!

Looks like they're cutting back on the storage though, i swear i had "unlimited" when i bought mine, as well as a LOT more bandwidth than they're offering now.

[Agent]

I use evo-hosting. Have been nothing but excellent.
Any support related issues have been fast, and I've never had any speed issues with my sites.

http://www.evohosting.co.uk/hosting/business looks like a decent plan for you?

[directhex]

Something like this mabye?
http://www.memset.com/dedicated_miniserver.php

Gives more control, espesually if you ever want to use mono stuff.

Have you used these guys before?

[nvening]

reported

[BlackDwarf]

I moved my website to TSOHost recently. I paid about £31 I think, for a whole year.
This nets me:
2.5Gb disk space
20Gb monthly bandwidth
25 email accounts
20 subdomains
3 addon & parked domains
25 FTP accounts
and 5 SQL Databases

Customer support was spot on, and it was as simple as changing my name servers with 123reg

I TOTALLY would reccomend these guys

[TheAnimus]

Have you used these guys before?

Yes, I like them. You can ring throu (they have a secretry grade call handling service) and speak to techs easily, at any hour.

I'm a very low income for them, as I've only used them for personal + very very low trafic stuff. But they still treat me very well. Been with them for about 6 years now i think.

[Barry]

ikhost.net, amazing service, great uptime, not the cheapest around, used them for a couple of years now

[Steve]

Tried mod_gzip?

I'm interested to see how this pans out. I have pretty basic hosting now, but I'd like a VPS to give me more freedom without having host stuff from home.

[tigerboyce]

QiQ here too,

Luckily I grabbed their offer near the beginning of this year which was 20GB/200GB webspace/bandwidth, and only cost me £7.50 for the whole year! sadly that offer isn't on anymore, but as a hosting service in general I'm very pleased with them. As Whiternoise mentioned, they are cutting back on what they offer, their plans are now nowhere near as good, but imo their current "premium plus" is still really good value. Can't fault their service at all.

[this_is_gav]

How are QiQ offering such good offers - even their non-offers? There's got to be a catch somewhere?

I presume they aren't limiting file sizes any more (there was a 50mb limit years ago)?

I'm with Dream-Hosting.co.uk at work. Their Reseller account is juicy and very reliable, though not especially cheap. I don't bother with the reselling, I'm just hosting a single site off of it, though it's quite a high-usage site.

My own personal space is just 3iX hosting. Cheap and cheerful. Not quite as cheap as QiQ's offers though...