Website Providers: A Stand-Off
In today’s market there is an ocean of website providers waiting for your business. You are ready to take the online plunge with your business, or perhaps you want to switch hosting providers. Where do you start? And how do you make the choice that’s right for you? Here’s our UK website providers stand-off: enjoy!
How do you choose a website provider?
It basically comes down to this: what do you need? The answer to this really depends on a number of factors, such as how technical are you? How big is your website? How much traffic do you receive? How quickly do you want to scale up? What would happen if your servers went down? If there’s a problem how quickly can it be fixed?
Depending on your specific needs, here’s a list of some of the top UK website providers and what makes them stand out from the rest:
- SiteGround
According to top5hosting, SiteGround stands out for its speed, security and outstanding support. The speed their servers offer to UK visitors to your site is impressive. The MySQL databases are stored on SSD with RAID hardware resulting in very fast search queries.
Their special feature is “SuperCacher”, which basically separates cached pages onto a separate server. Search results are stored in RAM, and can be retrieved for future identical queries. They also optimise your loading speed, resulting in a much faster website.
Another benefit is free daily backups, and security-wise they isolate accounts on shared servers so that one infected account will not influence all accounts on the same server.
Their only point loss was in price and features, as some UK website providers beat them there.
- GoDaddy
A web hosting giant, GoDaddy’s special feature is its intricate domain searching function. Even if the domain name you wish to register isn’t available, they will place it on backorder. As they are such a huge business, they own all of their data centres, which allows them strict security controls. They claim that they do not outsource and their services range from shared hosting to complex commerce and business solutions.
What also makes them very popular is that they’re easy to use. One-click install of many applications and an easy-to-use control panel are winners when it comes to attracting customers.
- UK2.NET – That’s us!
UK2.NET are a Shoreditch-based startup, growing quickly whilst providing excellent service.Their review can be summarised as “UK2.NET is giving you everything you need to succeed in your on-line adventure.” (http://www.top5hosting.co.uk/review/uk2)
Not only are they low cost, they also rank highly in reliability for their service to individuals and businesses alike. They offer shared hosting, VPS, dedicated hosting and domain registration. Their support is impeccable and not isolated to only one channel: you can contact their support team by phone or email, and consult their amazing knowledgebbase tutorials.
Their “Client Hosting Interface” CHI is an inhouse designed control panel which is easy to use and allows you to carry out all kinds of tasks from one central place. They also have a website builder, which includes responsive design.
To help you make the right choice for you, here’s a checklist of what to look out for when choosing from website providers UK:
- Search online for hosting companies. Ask your friends and business contacts whom they would recommend. Then make a list and check them out one by one.
- If your business is UK based then make sure the website provider’s servers are also based in the UK to ensure fast data delivery. This also affects your website hosting speed, which needs to be as fast as possible; loading times are a ranking factor on Google.
- Security: Is your website and its data protected from attacks? Are there reliable firewalls and automatic updates?
- Read as many online reviews as you can find. You will start to see the patterns emerging.