Domain and Website Hosting Advice

This page contains some information on web hosting, and lists some of the UK web domain hosting companies that we've had experience of...

What is web hosting?

If you want to get a website up on the Internet - you need to create a bunch of webpages, then find a place to put them - once you've made your website, you'll need to "host" it somewhere, and for that, you'll need a web hosting service. We list some of the major UK players below. For more on creating your own website, see our "Get your own website" or "Creating a website" pages.

Namesco

Names.co.uk , owned by Namesco is our top choice.

Names.co.uk offer low-price domain names, including .co.uk , .com, European names, .info and .me.uk. Namesco's domain name prices start from £10 for a basic domain with forwarding to another web and email address. They offer a wide range of hosting options with online stats, POP mailboxes, auto-responders and password-protected folders.

Namesco also host FrequencyCast, our podcast. See our Namesco page for more details.

Hosted space control panel
Namesco Control Panel - Domain list

Simply webmail
Access POP mail via webmail

1 & 1 - No Longer Recommended

Until July 2006, we recommended 1 & 1 Internet as providers of hosting and domain services - that was, until one of our team fell victim to one of their little scams, and received a debt collection letter. A search around the 'net reveals that lots of others have fallen foul of their dubious business practices. More on Consumerdeals Beware! website.

Hostway

Hostway - Although we have no direct experience of Hostway ourselves, their range comes highly recommended. They were formerly known as IARNA, and have recently (Dec 2002) been voted the number one UK hosting company by uk.tophosts.com. Prices for hosting and domains start from £89.95, which is a little more than Simply and Clara (see above), but you get the following:

100 MB Disk Space
Webstats and raw log data
5 POP3/Email Accounts
Custom Error Pages
Real Audio/Video and Windows Media Streaming
Perl 5 CGI., CGI Bin and SSI
WAP/WML Support

All reports we've read show Hostway to be an excellent choice for a professional and stable hosting solution. For details of their range, see www.hostway-uk.com

Fasthosts

If you're looking for a low-cost hosting option that offers unlimited storage space and unlimited bandwidth, you should check out Fasthosts.

Fasthosts offers a wide variety of hosting packages with some handy added extras, and it's worth reviewing their service as a comparison to any other hosting options you're considering. Take a look at fasthosts.co.uk.

Clara.net

Clara.net are one of the more trusted names around, and are especially popular with small businesses who need more reliable and stable connections. They can help with domain name purchase as well as home or business web hosting. Basic website hosting starts at around £30 (with a domain name) including get 10MB of webspace and email forwarding. Paying a little more gets extras like web stat reports and improved email handling. This site is hosted with Clara. More on Clara.net.

Web statistics and hit reports

Internet Resources - Links to webpage tools, web design links, search engine submissions and counters

More details of Broadband providers and dialup access providers

Want to create a website? See our Website Basics page for more

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