Recommend a web hosting service

[fruitcake]

I have three wordpress sites with half a dozen mailboxes per site. I am familiar with cPanel and would like to continue using that for site admin.

The sites are essentially serving static content, not serving videos or handling transactions. I'd like to use servers in the UK, ideally a UK company.

I currently use an inexpensive hosting company based in the UK but they've twice snuck up their prices without explanation, their mail forwarding service is failing to forward emails and their ticket support now appears to have been outsourced and is slow. I can solve most problems myself, but when I open a ticket, I prefer a quick techie's response to a slow 'customer service' one. My current provider used to give the former, but this has changed.

Your qualified recommendations would be welcome. If you could say why they're good, that would help. Thanks for taking the time.

[robgul]

I have been using Heart Internet for about 5 years and apart from the odd glitch that they usually manage to fix pretty quickly I've been happy - cost isn't the cheapest but you get what you pay for (or don't with "free" hosting).  Support system is almost instant with replies.

I should add that I manage about 10 domains with website and am a "Heart Reseller" as that's the cheaper per domain option - there are lots of tools within the available packages; most of my sites are running Joomla - Wordpress is supported - and even the evil Drupal!

Rob

[lastant]

I've used (and recommended) Name2Net for a good while now, having been originally introduced to them as they were owned by a friend to a friend.

I'm pretty sure they're not the cheapest (the basic hosting package is £35.99 for a year, inc domain name), but the help and support they offer has been brilliant - quick to respond, no matter what the issue is.

They were also extremely helpful at re-instating one of my sites (and in a ridiculously short time after I somehow managed to miss the renewal deadline despite multiple reminders. That level of service is good enough to warrant a recommendation from me!

[Cyclops]

I moved to Siteground about a year ago and host 6 WP sites there. Lots of features such as CDN and SSL included but the biggest plus for me is customer support. 24/7 phone and live chat who have managed to solve all the problems I've thrown at them instantly. Zero issues with site downtime or email delivery.

[vorsprung]

I have a really simple blog on WordPress, it's at wordpress.com

Now, I know that people like to install plugins and stuff on their Wordpress installs.  There is loads of third party stuff available.  It's one of the reasons people like Wordpress.

If I had to run the third party plugins I would pay top $$$ for a really good service because unfortunately, these plugins seem to have random security problems on a frequent basis.  For example

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/three-wordpress-plugin-zero-days-exploited-in-the-wild/

I like to keep it simple, I just don't use any third party stuff at all

[Ham]

I've been using Evohosting for years, their servers and support are UK based, very responsive (although likely very small) and they use cPanel.

It helps that I have a historic package that gives me unlimited enterprise features for about 30% of their current package pricing, but I've been v happy with them over the years.

https://www.evohosting.co.uk/web-hosting/

[fruitcake]

Thanks for these replies folks. It's useful to see the range of hosting packages on the market. The more I learn, the more I figure that it's the support that costs. Me, I'm more than happy with a two line response from a techie which I can use as a basis for problem solving. In contrast, I guess the majority of punters want more 'hand holding' when their site breaks, i.e. a professional customer service response, and that takes staff time, which has a cost.

[tonycollinet]

tsohost seems to offer very low cost package, but still has 24 hour (and very responsive) support. There's a question I want to answer - I might just try now.

[Pickled Onion]

If you're still looking, I have a Heart reseller account and could offer a mutually beneficial deal on as many accounts as you require with whatever trimmings.

[Vince]

I asked the same question earlier this year.
https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=101928.msg2139034#msg2139034
I concluded that:
Heart was too expensive as the MySQL requirement put me in to one of their professional offerings.
TSOHosts too cheap. Lots of traffic on their twitter feed about poor availability - and yes some people were claiming their business critical systems were affected (on a £15 service!)
Eventually settled on United Hosting as recommended by Jaded. We've had no issues with it at all.

[tonycollinet]

I asked the same question earlier this year.
https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=101928.msg2139034#msg2139034
I concluded that:
Heart was too expensive as the MySQL requirement put me in to one of their professional offerings.
TSOHosts too cheap. Lots of traffic on their twitter feed about poor availability - and yes some people were claiming their business critical systems were affected (on a £15 service!)
Eventually settled on United Hosting as recommended by Jaded. We've had no issues with it at all.

I've had no noticeable issues with availability - though admittedly on a rarely used personal blog. Emails have never failed to come through.

I raised a ticket to ask the question mentioned above - response time was under two hours. Im on the £15 per year hosting and I rate them pretty highly.

[Paul H]

tsohost seems to offer very low cost package, but still has 24 hour (and very responsive) support. There's a question I want to answer - I might just try now.

I look after the local CTC group's website, which is hosted on tsohost, the demands are not usually very high and there's been no problems with the hosting.  The support we got when we did have some problems not related to the hosting was superb, they sorted some stuff out that wasn't part of the service, far better than I'd have expected for £3 a month.   I didn't get the techie's response that fruitcake is looking for, but then I probably wouldn't have known what to do with it.
I've only used one other, now not in business, so don't have much to compare to, but certainly feel we get oury monies worth.  Plus there's no contract, we pay monthly, if it wasn't working we'd go elsewhere.

[Afasoas]

I've long since given up relying on cpanel / plesk style hosting per se due to the hilarious problems caused by sharing a mail server with less than scrupulous companies who use the cheap hosting to send spam.

If you have some time to roll your sleeves up, try rolling your own on a Virtually Provisioned Server.
OVH have data centres in the UK. VPS from £3 pcm.

https://www.ovh.co.uk/vps/
Running your own mail server is PITA but having almost complete control over your hosting environment pays dividends in the long run.
If you have many sites to host, it can work out a lot cheaper too in terms of financial outlay - you can host sites and email for multiple domains on the same server(s).
Not so much cheaper in the short-term when factoring the up-front man hours spent setting it up. Longer term it can pay off (and makes perfect sense for those who have the skills)

[Valiant]

Siteground for me too.