How to find the best hosting in the UK?

Posted by jason stewart on February 29th, 2020

Things to consider before buying email hosting

Before buying a hosting, even if it seems very attractive for its cheap prices and its seemingly unlimited features you must take into account a series of very important steps.

Step 1: Understand what your needs are

Step 2: Know your Budget

Step 3: Verify the Hosting Provider Speed

Step 4: Check the Hosting Activity Time

Step 5: Check what additional features you get

Step 6: Avoid Additional Sales Attempts

Step 7: Evaluate Customer Service and Support

Step 1: Understand what your needs are

There is a hosting service for each person and for each project. For example, if you have in mind the idea of ​​selling products online you will need a hosting that provides all the security and performance features necessary for an online store.

Now if what you need is a web page to show your opinions to the world, then WordPress blog will go perfect.

You can also try to ask yourself the following more precise questions

1.  Will I have a static page or will my content change constantly? If you only need a web page with simple static HTML, any hosting company will do a good job, and you just need to find the cheapest price. However, if your website has a lot of content that varies with time, and a lot of multimedia then you will need a CMS or a web creator, and you should look for the best hosting that includes automatic installers or that have integrated website creators.

2. Are you going to host an online store? Hosting for online stores or eCommerce requires more resources and more advanced security features. Check if the host you chose provides SSL certificates, strong security features and is capable of hosting a heavy website.

3. How will big your website be? While shared hosting is highly scalable, it is still better for small or medium-sized websites. Therefore, check that the provider has plans scalable enough by the time your website grows.

You should also check if the host provides email, domain name, and some other extras.

Step 2: Know your Budget

There are cheap hosting providers that sell packages for only € 0.80 per month and premium hosts that can cost more than € 10 per month.

But consider that you will not pay for hosting but also for a domain name. That may entail an additional € 12 per year for a simple .com or .co.uk domain registration. Domains that are already registered or owned by other people and are already established often cost thousands of euros.

Looking at our best suppliers, you can definitely get offers from € 1 to € 6 per month even with a simple domain included. So, unless you are looking to host multiple websites or online stores that require additional resources, private SSL or other security features, it makes no sense to spend more money.

One of the things you can do is set your budget at least 2 years in advance. Check the terms and conditions of the provider: most hosting companies offer excellent deals for the first year but then raise the price. Keep in mind that if you pay € 50 per year for the first year, that will probably not be the case after that period has passed.

Step 3: Verify Hosting Speed

A quick website improves the user experience and helps its growth. With that in mind, a powerful server with a quick response time will make your pages load quickly.

In fact, slow loading websites increase bounce rates. And not by little: you can lose up to 20% of your visitors if the page takes 1 second more to load 

Statistics for mobile devices are even harder. If your page takes up to 5 seconds to load, you can lose 90% of visitors.

Taking into account that 50% of web page traffic comes from mobile devices, you absolutely need a fast hosting provider. Using Google’s Test My Site feature, we estimate that even an improvement of 0.9 s in reducing the delay can generate almost $ 13,000 more per year.

The fast hosting provider will save you money. But it's not just the speed of the service that makes your site fast.

In all our best email hosting  reviews, we test the response times of the suppliers and use them as a ranking factor. Also, keep in mind that SSDs, caching, CDN and other optimization tools can make servers faster. So, if that is included, it is a great advantage for the provider you are about to choose from.

Step 4: Check the Hosting Activity Time

Most hosting providers offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee that, in theory, sounds really good. But if I calculate how many minutes the website can be inactive per week with said SLA (service level agreement), you will quickly discover that it is 10 minutes per week 

Step 5: Check what Additional Features You Get

The more things included in the service, the better it will be for you. All our main hosting providers include essential elements such as the installation of SSL, an easy-to-use control panel, automatic installers and with more expensive plans you will have free domain names.

But some providers offer even more.

Premium features include DDoS protection, daily automatic backups, constant monitoring, caching, email hosting, CDN and more.

Evaluate which features you need. Sometimes an extra dollar may be worth it.

Additional features are usually those that decide the value of the hosting package. So, even if you’re chosen plan costs a couple of euros more but includes all the features mentioned above, you will get a good cost-benefit.

Step 6: Avoid Additional Sales Attempts

Additional sales and additional features are closely related. When a hosting provider does not include DDoS backups or protection in the package, you will surely want to sell it as an add-on.

It is even known that some suppliers are so aggressive with their additional sales that add-ons are automatically placed in your shopping cart.

So, if you see that the value of your shopping cart increases for no apparent reason, it is a good idea to verify if something was not added without permission.

Perhaps it would make sense to get a higher-level plan, pay a couple more dollars instead of buying additional features one by one.

On the other hand, not all accessories are intended only to shear. Backups for your website or domain privacy may be essential for your business. So just watch closely and check if everything you buy is intentional.

Step 7: Evaluate Customer Service and Support

It became a standard for hosting companies to have 24/7 customer support that includes at least online chat, email tickets or telephone support. However, the number of options will not decide if the support is good. You will have to consider their response times, communication and capacity.

For this step, several things can help you decide:

Read user reviews: people are generally quite honest about bad experiences.

Try to contact at least the sales support team: you will get a preview of what you can expect.

Read the professional reviews: in our blog, we always contact the support team with existing problems (or not) to evaluate them.

Choosing a host with excellent customer service will make your experience much more enjoyable, whether you're a beginner or a developer.

If a problem occurs, support agents could (and should) help you. Also, if your site is too slow for your preference, the support team could help you speed up or even transfer the site to a more powerful server.

The Best Web Hosting Provider: Conclusion

A good hosting provider will facilitate your work: you will get more traffic and faster conversions, the underlying problems will be solved by you and even web design will be an easy task. All our best web hosting providers are capable of that and more.

So, depending on what you need, these 5 best hosting providers will do a great job:

• The Email Shop is the cheapest, best email hosting provider and fastest hosting provider for growing individuals and businesses.
• HostPapa is the most suitable for beginners for an affordable price and excellent customer service.
• HostGator is aimed at small businesses and provides an easy-to-use hosting interface.
• A2 Hosting is the best web hosting provider with high scalability and different software options.
• SiteGround is not only powerful, but it provides the best customer service you can imagine.
• GoDaddy is a very powerful reliable hosting with great support and very easy to use.

What were your positive experiences and horror stories with a hosting provider? We will love to hear from you! Leave your comment below.