Advice please

piersk

Just started working as a contractor for a start up here in Guildford. It's gonna involve doing a website, possibly writing some kind of web based client sales tool as well as some other stuff.

Basically, the guy who is paying me (aka "The Boss-Man") needs hosting, both now for a website and possibly later for this sales tool (if he doesn't go down the route of Salesforce.com.

Anyway, the only stipulation is that the host is in the UK. Having searched this here forum, I've come up with HostPlus, and in particular, this package.

Has anyone here used/heard of host plus before? Also, does anyone know of any UK hosts that can beat this offer?

Ta muchly

goldbug

Originally posted by piersk
Also, does anyone know of any UK hosts that can beat this offer?

Ta muchly

Depends on what category you want them to "beat" the previous host in.

http://thebunker.net would easily surpass most UK hosts in terms of security.
havenco.com will beat anyone's privacy situation

😃 😃 😃

piersk

I should have known someone would be pedantic like that. And, to be honest, I'm not surprised it was you gb. :glare:

Ok, let me rephrase my query: can anyone see anything wrong with the package that I indicated earlier, or with the company in general?

goldbug

Originally posted by piersk
I should have known someone would be pedantic like that. And, to be honest, I'm not surprised it was you gb. :glare:

Glad I could live "down" to my expectations. 😃 Yay for the Echo lounge! 😃

pohopo

two things I would look into:

what kind of backups do they do? it will suck if they go down or get hacked and you find out they do not backup anything.
i see it takes them an average of 8 hours to fix a solution. is that good enough for your business? and i see they have a live support icon, but i bet you it is always 'offline'. if they really have someone giving support that should be on at least during work hours.

everything else looks fine, the space, bandwidth, and the servers seem to be at stable data centers.

bubblenut

Well it's not quite in the UK and it's not quite a hosting company but I went to the datacenter which holds our servers last week and was very impressed. We've got two 3m racks at Foreshore, in Jersey. They have two, completely seperate, fully loaded power supplies so if one fails it does not affect the other. Their largest shareholder (80%) is Jersey Electric and they are on the 1st priority level for emergency power (the same as the emergency services, hospitals, airport etc) . The backup generators (two 15 foot jet engines) for this emergency power are located right behind the datacenter. Now most people would think that this is enough disaster protection right? Not the guys at Foreshore, no, they've also got their own generators incase the islands fail safe power backup fails and also 40mins of battery backup to fill in the gaps. I won't even start on the security (dual card and pin security door after door) but suffice to say, it was OK.

Unfortunately it doesn't come cheap 🙁

Shrike

http://www.intercea.com. We aren't cheap, but very reliable 🙂

Weedpacket

Originally posted by bubblenut
We've got two 3m racks at Foreshore, in Jersey.

It's only a shame that they didn't pay a bit more attention to their web site as well - browser incompatabilities and lapse's in proofreading are a bit of a turnoff. 🙁

vaaaska

Originally posted by Weedpacket
It's only a shame that they didn't pay a bit more attention to their web site as well - browser incompatabilities and lapse's in proofreading are a bit of a turnoff. 🙁

Design matters?! 😉

An old client of mine contacted me last week to develop a new web hosting service for them from the ground up (not just a design project). I know of a few webhosts out there who believe that if your website looks too good, people will never sign up for it.

It's interesting that all of these servers are located in NJ as a HUGE amount of spam is generated right there. It's good to know that if the power goes out, our spam systems will still be operational.

bubblenut

Not New Jersey, I'm talking about the original, channel island, tax haven Jersey.

pohopo

...

Elizabeth

Originally posted by vaaaska
I know of a few webhosts out there who believe that if your website looks too good, people will never sign up for it.

And then you have the wacky clients that make you switch web hosts for them because they think the voice message you get when you call the host directly sounds "unprofessional."

beinerts

Hi, try www.bestukhosts.co.uk, it's not a hosting company, but you can search for and compare hosting packages. Make sure you select PHP in your search!

pohopo

vaaaska wrote:
An old client of mine contacted me last week to develop a new web hosting service for them from the ground up (not just a design project). I know of a few webhosts out there who believe that if your website looks too good, people will never sign up for it.

I am the total opposite. If the site does not look professional I will not buy anything from the site. This is only for sites that are selling something. For reference type sites like php.net I do not expect any awesome design as long as the site is functional and I am able to find what I need.

Check out webhostingtalk.com where you find a lot of information on different web hosts. The rule of thumb though is you get what you pay for.

Weedpacket

Bugger. Now I'm trying to remember the title of that book (I think the author was William Gibson.) One of the characters had developed the theory that the grandeur of the web site is inversely proportional to its real-world presence. Based on one company's web site, he figured they were probably operating out of a rolled-up newspaper in a railway luggage locker.

Elizabeth

Don't know about Weed's book, but there was this article that got slashdotted back in March that may be touching on the same thing:

http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/20/175212 (The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites)

vaaaska

In Conclusion – Its Not Necessarily Ugliness That Sells

I'm getting so sick and tired of all of this baloney...SFS.

And for every 'ugly' website (I wish somebody would actually point some out) there are successful ones as well. 'Pretty' oftentimes has nothing to do with 'design'. Graphic designers, in particular, are not merely engaged in making pretty things all day.

I guess on the flipside we should all acknowledge that bad programming sells. Look at MS. MySpace is pure rubbish programming but it's popular as heck.

Sheesh... I quit.

vaaaska

Clearly, those kinds of things bug me. Perhaps I'm the only designer around here who is going to stand up to this kind of insanity. Design does matter dammit!

I also hope it's realized that I'm joking there...although, if I felt like brining upon all the bad karma the internet can muster I would write a parody article that basically stated that good programming doesn't sell. Of course, I won't.

'Webdesign' is such a...ummm...odd profession. Or interface design (not talking about applicatoins per se). I love a well designed site but I want my information and I don't want to be distracted. My beef is that I feel the people who write these articles are biased because they don't understand that the lack of gradients, mega color and/or a ton of graphic edifice doesn't mean that something isn't pretty. I'm a minimalist and I am positive that 50% of all people would think my work looks unfinished or totally not designed.

Anyways...argh... 😉

Weedpacket

Hey, speaking as someone who's attempt at interface layout always seems to end up looking thoroughly Soviet, I appreciate a site that has been designed by someone who gets their interface's proportions to work aesthetically. Even if the only visible design elements are white rectangles with 1px black borders on a white background.

vaaaska

I don't think I need to point out that this is a very respected agency. 😉

http://www.wddg.com/newsietsoonk/