I am going to dump "FastHosts" as they are beyond useless, and I am looking for a new hosting company so I can tell FastHosts to go forth and multiply.

I dont need anything too serious (such as my own server), but I do need unlimited bandwidth and support for SQL and PHP.

I have done a little browsing and found a company called http://hostpapa.co.uk/

The name is unfamiliar and corny, but they are cheap and offer everything I want, any comments or suggestions about HostPapa are welcome, along with any recommendations for other hosting companies.


Andy

I am pretty much a novice (a couple of domains, 1 phpBB and a couple of email boxes) but use http://www.webhosting.uk.com/ and have had no issues with them.Shurely shome mishtake? Anyone who offers this (at a fixed price) must be from the unemployment queue with a couple of years experience in the sub-prime mortgage market

OK, you have me there, unlimited is not really an issue, 50GB's/Month is loads more than is needed, but cheap, reliable and contactable is a must.

http://www.webhosting.uk.com/ Might be great, but they cost twice as much as many companies do, and its hard to justify that cost against many cheaper competitors even if they are an unknown quantity.

I will certainly consider them as they are cheaper than some and come with a recommendation.


Andy

Yes anyone selling unlimited space or bandwidth is selling snake oil. Most that sell large amounts of bandwidth for peanuts particularly are oveselling so much that they are selling amphibian oil. It's not sustainable and in the end the client suffers.

I have heard good things about http://www.unitedhosting.co.uk/ but have no direct experience as a customer.

I haven't had cause to contact them so "no comment" on that score. (Actually did swap an email with them to verify domain swap-in logistics - was probably such a noddy question that it was easy for them to make a quick/coherent reply!)

I am on the £20/year package that came up in my search to tell my previous to go forth 11 months ago: I was wary of avoiding the "free'er" guys who may add bits of marketing to phpBB or emails to subsidise the low prices.

Isn't FastHosts a domain registrar? So you have their web package? My workplace used them before I transferred us to http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/ and now I use an American based host (because of the favourable exchange rate).

I'd like to recommend Heart for the domains, but frankly all the uk registrars in league with Nominet are pretty crappy. (Do you know Fasthost kept all their users passes unecrypted and there was a break-in at their office?)


Yes, overselling is rife. Be alert and avoid anybody selling you unrealistic bandwidth. Their mysql server is most probably run on a 386.

I fail to remember how everything went bad, but I do remember some very very secure passwords that were created afterwards.

If this helps you help me, I may be looking at a "Dedicated Server", right now this wont happen, but if we can quote our cistomers for webhosting and get our own server we will be happy so long as the hosting company are good.

Or to put it another way, please recommend a good "Dedicated Server" company.

I have found deals ranging from £40 per month to beyond £300, the services that look decent at a decent price are around £80-£90. Remember that we need to aim at the lowest cost if we are to do this, simply because we cant overcharge our customers as we have generally pointed our customers previously at hosting companies so they can sort it out themselves, so it will have to be in the range that they are currently paying.


Andy

Andy, I thought you didn't want anything too serious, now you want a dedicated server!

If you're offering hosting to customers, you can do that with a basic reseller package. They have WHM panel and you create the accounts on that.

The next step up from that is VPS. Virtual Private Servers basically slice one physical machine up into several virtual machines, essentially x OSes all running simultaneously on the same machine that get 100/x% slice of CPU, memory etc.

Dedicated servers are physical machines in the datacentre loaded with a single OS. Colocation is an arrangement where you send the datacentre the machine and they hook it up to their backbone.

I haven't much experience with dedicated servers, but unless there's a specific reason against it, you should look across the pond. You'll get a lot more bang for your buck.

I dont know how popular the websites in question are, this will really be the crunch point of what will cope, I will try and find out the monthy bandwidth of these websites to see if I need anything as serious as a dedicated server. I assume that if I log into the current server I can get some statistics.

What will the performance hit be like on something like an average "reseller package" when hosting 10 websites compared to a VPS or a dedicated server.???

As far as getting hosting in the US is concerned, due to the $/£ rate at the moment it doesnt look quite as attractive as it did 12-months ago, and the only person I know who has hosting in the US is going to move his website to a UK company because the website is a slower loading than it should be.


Andy

Well, that would all depend on traffic volume, how much they thrash php/mysql and how many resources have been allocated to you by your provider. I shouldn't imagine there'd be any problem with 10 hosts on a reseller package though. Usually there are many more.

The reason for, but also against, choosing a reseller package is that it's a managed environment. You don't have to constantly install security patches for Apache, or modssl etc, but on the flip side you have less control over how the server's configured. You're also a man-in-the-middle. If things go wrong, like a customer account knocks out the server, you get blamed.