Choosing a someone to host your website can be a complex business, everyone seems to offer so much disk space, bandwidth, email accounts and control. Unfortunately its not until you’ve signed on the dotted line that you find out what the service is really like (I’m speaking from experience). A few years ago I switched from using a UK-based web hosting company to a US one called Westhost. On the whole I’ve been very pleased, here’s what I like about them:

• Lots of bandwidth – even their cheapest packages typically have over 100GB of bandwidth per month compared to 10GB in the UK
• Unlimited domain (and sub-domain) names on most packages (not “personal” accounts though)
• Popular programs are pre-installed (but you have to activate them)
• 24/7/365 telephone/email/chat support – I prefer to use the chat option as its faster
• Virtual Private Server (VPS) means that you can even reboot the server
• Unlimited MySQL databases and remote access

Costs are about £5/month for the business packages but you can also get a limited VPS for just £2/month! Tip: I recommend the business packages over the personal ones, they only cost a little more but provide more flexibility – in fact more of everything, services, email addresses, bandwidth. Usually the best deal is the monthly “special”.

See also

Posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 in: Hosting.