Reliable Web Hosting Service?

[realtnt]

Hi,

 

Our website is currently hosted on Heart Internet's shared service but in the last few months their service has been absolutely rubbish. Every few days the website is down and I only know the times that I (or one of the teachers) noticed it. I foolishly only recently started monitoring with monitor.us and statuscake. The last couple of days in fact it has been more down than up and the upshot of an exchange of emails with support was that their shared hosting service doesn't have an SLA and suggested we get a VPS. However, apart from the fact that I wouldn't want to pay them any more money, I want to get a managed service which I don't think they provide.

 

So, does anyone have any web host recommendations, either for a reliable shared hosting service or for a managed server. I was looking at this one:

 

Hetzner Online AG: Managed Server MX90-SSD

 

I use their vServer VX11 for personal projects and have been quite happy with it.

 

Our website is a WordPress site and it is quite heavily used for blogging by all the staff and we also post a lot of news for the parents, etc.

 

Thanks

[synaesthesia]

1&1 is fairly good apparently. I'd personally avoid Hetzner, they have long standing issues of service, DDOS mitigation (or lack of) and severe abuse issues.

[antlear]

Hi

 

I have multiple websites on one.com and find the service really good.

[localzuk]

Take a look at OVH. I run 3 VPSs on their systems and they've been flawless - including sending out optimisation advice when they discover things that'll reduce background CPU usage etc...

 

Edit: Just noticed you say you want managed services. Rackspace seem to be the leaders in this area.

Edited January 6, 2015 by localzuk

[ZeroHour]

Hetzner are completely fine and one of the best hosts out there. We used them for years hosting this very site with minimal issues and wouldnt hesitate to use them again.

We are currenlty using AWS though for the autoscaling as Hetzner can take a day or 2 to provision new hardware.

Edited January 6, 2015 by ZeroHour

[Arthur]

1&1 is fairly good apparently.

1&1 are one of the worst hosts you could choose.

[jtoland]

We use ovh but we rent a dedicated server and have cpanel installed on it

[ZeroHour]

We use ovh but we rent a dedicated server and have cpanel installed on it

 

We actually have to block a lot of OVH's ip ranges as we see a lot of automated login attempts. They have a cheaper vps host Kimsufi who have been the main culprits.

[benjie]

uk2.net are GOOD and cheap.

[realtnt]

Thanks for the replies! Like I said in the OP, I've been using Hetzner for a number of years and I've been quite happy with them. The thing that holds me back is the cost in relation to the fact that the specs are a bit of an overkill for us. I think it might be a hard sell to the boss going from £150 to £1000 a year. I think something like the managed VPS that go daddy charges around £25 a month would be better suited. I will check out uk2.net (on the phone for now)

 

Thanks again!

[jtoland]

If your interested in a vps try https://www.digitalocean.com

[Chris_]

We used to have our website hosted by RM with an uptime guarantee of 99.9%. The hosting was so unreliable and RM didn't really seem to mind that the site wasn't available 99.9% of the time.

 

We moved to Managed Hosting | Dedicated Servers & Cloud Hosting | UKFast on one of their managed cloud platforms. The hosting is so much more reliable. Since moving the site hasn't been down once. They have a proper SLA with penalties. Excellent support and notification systems also.

[unixman_again]

I've run websites hosted by The Positive Internet Company on both the Z servers (shared) and Dolphin servers (dedicated). Absolutely 100% reliable and excellent support. They aren't the cheapest, but the are good (just as they say).

[matt40k]

@realtnt - Mythic-Beasts!!! - https://www.mythic-beasts.com/ - based in Cambs, they host the Raspberry Pi website, so they can handle load, real cool folks - Server Castle | Mythic Beasts, they also know there stuff, they're one of the few hosting companies providing IPv6 by default. Also, they do PO\invoice etc so the bursar will be happy.

[Edu-IT]

Managed Hosting | Dedicated Servers & Cloud Hosting | UKFast or http://www.tsohost.com for us.

[hcs-tom]

If you're hosting a CMS, GoDaddy revamped their offering in this area recently and found their service to be fast, responsive so far.

 

I can also vouch for 123reg in terms of reliability, but their customer service was disappointing on a recent request to cancel a domain name.

[hawc]

For dedicated hosts, look at Welcome - Online.net

 

Very good, cheap and fast. Service is fast (I have had hardware replacement at 3 in the morning before)

[MatthewL]

I use 1&1 for Mail and domain, I have a hosting package with Dreamhost, does me for what I need. We used to use Fasthosts for all our external facing sites when I was in the NHS, no issues there and the dedicated server we had was not a bad little thing. Used to run 50 or so sites off it.

[realtnt]

Hi guys, I went with Mythic Beasts in the end. I can't actually give any feedback in terms of speed and reliability yet as I requested a nameserver change to the Lea over 6 weeks ago and I'm still waiting! However, in terms of tech/customer support, every time I contacted them I had a reply very quickly (within an hour or two), to the point and seemingly from people that know what they're talking about! Will update when I have some actual hosting data!

[hawc]

Is the domain a .uk domain? If so, contact Nominet and explain the issue. They will be able to force the LEA to hand the domain over so you can run it through whoever you want. Nominet

 

HTH

H

[realtnt]

Thanks for the info. I'll give the LEA a call on Monday and if we're not anywhere near to resolving this I'll contact Nominet.

 

Thanks again.

[hawc]

I simply mentioned Nominet to the LEA here and they shat themselves and sorted it