co.uk hosting

Who to use for hosting a small site

[GlamKitten]

Hi all, i'm new here, though I've used the boards for information for a few weeks and found them amazingly helpful. Now it's time to ask a question myself.

I run a small club here in London playing glam music from the 70's (think Bowie). I want to register and host a website for my club. The club so far hasn't made any money so I want to keep expenses to a minimum.

I need a hosting plan that will give me a moderate amount of webspace, access to server logs, multiple pop3 accounts, email forwarding, ftp uploads, cgi-bin for forums/messageboards (though I may wish to upgrade to something ASP based (as I am an asp programmer) in future).

I've found plans from UK60 upwards p/a which I think is a fair price.

Who would you people suggest I use and what other factors should I consider?

Thanks, Harry.

[click watcher]

as is often posted here its a good idea to search on google with terms like

insertwebhosthere sucks

or

insertwebhosthere complaint

or

insertwebhosthere useless

you get the picture, it can show you a lot.

- additionally a thread like this is inviting url drops so consider any replies carefully.

[hayluke]

A couple of things to consider:

firstly make sure you have ownership of the domain so that you have overall control of it.

Secondly check on the levels of customer support. In my experience you're usually better off deailing with a smaller company who employ real humans to deal with questions/problems/compaints and don't just use feedback forms on a web site that no-one ever responds to.

Lastly try and find out how relaible they are and get some kind of garentee if possible. In my experience you'll soon forget that the services was the cheapest you could find when you go without email for a week or two. Conversley though the most expensive is not always the most realaible!

Personally I use a local host who I know I can contact by phone if i have any problems..

[Brett_Tabke]

There are so many forum spammers [webmasterworld.com] in the hosting world, that having discussions about them, is all but impossible.

Your best bet is to ask trusted friends and research research research until you get to the point of being sick of research. Then go back through your best bets and pick one.

[brotherhood of LAN]

Glam kitten you could always hire someone if you are less interested in web sites and more interested in running night clubs ;)

[GlamKitten]

Brotherhood: If only I could. But the club is quite an infrequent thing for now, doesn't bring me any money (it's just done for the fun of it) and although searching for a host has been much harder than I anticipated I guess it'll be a useful learning experience.

[click watcher]

here's my best tip ...

whoever you go with, no matter how good the deal appears to be, do not sign up for more than a 1 month at a time contract, that way you can pull out with minimal damage.

also although there is debate about it here, i would recommend looking at US based hosts, i use them for .co.uk domains, the pound is strong so the deals are good for brits.

[Brett_Tabke]

Most of the hosting forums themselves are run by affiliate program operators just to promote their own products and services.

[GlamKitten]

Brett, i realise that a lot of forums are just marketing places, that's why I asked my question in here instead!

Got some good advice, but still far from an answer (or answers).

The search continues...