Well i am building a new site....

 

Normally i stick with with Prime Hosting <3

 

just wondering if i should try......

Krystal Hosting (amethyst plan)

Peartree (Home)

 

Or any other? (the site i will be building will be quite small... not sure how many images yet) but quite basic... nothing fancy.

 

Also the domian name is taken on both .com & .co.uk

So we are debating using

.uk.com

.me.uk (this is personal isn't it... would it be ok for a small buiness as have limited fund?)

.gb.com

 

Also i noticed not a lot of domain sellers or web host sell these..... please can you advice of any good places for me to buy the domain name.

 

Thanks

E x

Hi Emmi, can't advise you on hosting unfortunately (i'm biased) but with regards to your choice of domain names, uk.com and gb.com aren't proper/true top level or country code domains.

 

Back in the early days of the internet someone bought the domain name uk.com (as well as gb.com) and had the bright idea to effectively sell sub-domains of that domain. Unfortunately for the end-user, the company that owns uk.com has a monopoly on sub-domains so that is why prices are generally much higher than other domains and you won't find much variation in the price.

 

If the .com and .uk are already taken for your domain, i would seriously look at either re-branding or purchasing one or both of the domains from their current owners. The confusion that could arise from having a yourcompany.uk.com address but not any of the others is possibly not worth the hassle - you'll lose a lot of potential visitors to those other domains.

thanks i will advise the client about this... he is ringing me tomorrow about the options.

 

i think i may be able to check out with the one that owns the co.uk one as isn't in use whetever they are willing to sell

 

/hugs

Hi Emmi

 

Darrens advice is indeed excellent, especially if your target audience is UK based, people will be more familiar with .co.uk and .com as it doesnt really need any "thought process" anymore for users, and most would even make the natural assumption to try ".co.uk" so as Darren says, the potential for lost traffic is huge.

 

We also provide hosting, but I wont bore you with any sales patter, you could just check out the reviews people leave about us instead, which we try to keep track of on our testimonials page: http://www.wesh.co.uk/testimonials.php

 

Looking simply at the cost's of the hosting packages you mention, there does appear to be some overselling going on.

Peartree appear to be more of a design company who lease or colocate servers with ukservers.com, so maybe not suited to supporting hosting customers, seeing the lack of any support facilities at all on their website.

 

Just a few ponts to look out for too:

 

Servers with only 2 hard drives in are also NOT suitable for any website, no matter how big or small either, this will either mean:

 

A. that everything is running just from 1 hard drive, and backups are being kept on the second disk, so if the main drive fails, the server stops completely until it is replaced and restored from backups

 

B. That the server is using something known as RAID1 where its constantly making a duplicate of the first disk all the time, to the second disk, but again, disk failiure means downtime, and only having 1 disk serving all website means its highly unsuitable for large loads or heavy or lots of bandwidth usage.

 

Also, beware of the "Instant account setups" too, as this shows no manual fraud screening is taking place, and they are relying 100% on automated fraud screening, which is fairly easy to get around. This would simply mean that your website could be hosted alongside that of a scammer, or somebody abusing the server your on to send spam, or run heavy load scripts which slow things down.

 

Hope the info helps.

Peartree appear to be more of a design company who lease or colocate servers with ukservers.com, so maybe not suited to supporting hosting customers, seeing the lack of any support facilities at all on their website.

 

To be fair, you don't appear to have your own network either. Your site's IP resolves to an IP belonging to UKdedicated...

 

Also, beware of the "Instant account setups" too, as this shows no manual fraud screening is taking place, and they are relying 100% on automated fraud screening, which is fairly easy to get around. This would simply mean that your website could be hosted alongside that of a scammer, or somebody abusing the server your on to send spam, or run heavy load scripts which slow things down.

 

I think that's a little bit disingenuous - there are various excellent automated anti-fraud procedures you can put in place these days. A company can also have "instant setup" but also manually verify every order - they're not mutually exclusive. What's more, any server can end up hosting a phishing site or sending spam because of a compromised PHPBB forum or contact form script, even on a legitimate customer's website.

I usualy buy my domain names at either daily.co.uk or heartinternet.co.uk

 

and for hosting, why not get daily.co.uk's 1year free reseller hosting (even if you are only hosting one domain with no interntion or reselling, you may aswell grab it for free?)

To be fair, you don't appear to have your own network either. Your site's IP resolves to an IP belonging to UKdedicated...

 

We co-locate at 2 datacentres and buy all our IP's and Bandwidth from various colo providers. What I was actually saying (You quoted the wrong part) was nothing to do with who or where their servers are, but more to do with having zero support on their website at all. It gives the impressions its a 100% design agency, who happen to also sell a bit of space on their servers, rather than an actual hosting company who's primary function is to look after your hosting.

 

I think that's a little bit disingenuous - there are various excellent automated anti-fraud procedures you can put in place these days. A company can also have "instant setup" but also manually verify every order - they're not mutually exclusive. What's more, any server can end up hosting a phishing site or sending spam because of a compromised PHPBB forum or contact form script, even on a legitimate customer's website.

 

Not really, automated fraud screening is easy to get around, and doesnt always check half the thngs you can manually check. Obviously compromised scripts are a problem, but manual fraud screening keeps out the "deliberate server abusers"

What I was actually saying (You quoted the wrong part) was nothing to do with who or where their servers are, but more to do with having zero support on their website at all. It gives the impressions its a 100% design agency, who happen to also sell a bit of space on their servers rather than an actual hosting company who's primary function is to look after your hosting.

 

You could not be more wrong. Yes we are primarily a design agency but implying that we dont look after our hosting customers is untrue. We host the majority of our design clients and always have done. It has only been recently when we decided to offer it publicly.

 

You also talk about our lack of support facilities which again is untrue. You will see on our site we have a client area login. From the client area, customers can submit support tickets etc if they run into trouble. We never give a canned response, never get frustrated and never patronise.

 

Peartree appear to be more of a design company who lease or colocate servers with ukservers.com, so maybe not suited to supporting hosting customers, seeing the lack of any support facilities at all on their website.

 

Yes we do have equipment inside ukservers network and yes we do lease. I dont see a problem in doing that and nor do our customers. Just because one company leases equipment and one company colocates does not mean that one is better than the other.

 

Finally we use both automatic and manual fraud screening methods. On our side we use Maxmind Fraud Protection and either myself or another member of staff screens each and every order placed and if needs be we will ring the customer and confirm details. On the merchant side we have CV2, AVS and both Verified By Visa and Mastercard Secure Code or more commonly known as 3D Secure. We also hold a substantial amount of money in reserves used for chargeback protection.

 

I dont want to get into an argument over our hosting etc with wesh because I am not an argumentative person. I will not however sit back and listen to another user implying things about the company which are just not true.

 

Now back to the original post if we may.

 

Emmi, .uk.com and .gb.com are considerably more expensive. We are able to register them through our registration platform or you could go straight to Centralnic. Again the prices are not the same as .co.uk or .com and are much more expensive because of the monopolising effect the company has.

 

I agree with wesh, DarrenL gave a stunning reply. Liek the other two members, I would also recommend either re-branding the company or try a different extension such as .org.uk or .org?

Hi Rob

 

First of all, let me apologise if I've caused you any offence, none was intended at all and I was simply making observations based on the info visible on your website.

 

Secondly, please dont mis-quote me on things I have not said, nor implied.

I have never said, nor implied that "You dont look after your customers" so please, if you must quote me, do so only on what I have actually said.

 

I simply made an observation that there is no apparent support on your website.

I'm not referring to ticketing systems, every billing system has those built in, I was simply refering to the lack of any "apparent" support facilities, such as no links to anything that resembles support, no knowledgebase, no tutorials, there just seems to be a lack of anything to "guide the customer" if they have any problems.

 

It wasnt meant as any "gig" at you guys, it was just an observation, in line with the obvious fact that you guys are primarily a design company. Only observations mate.

 

Anyway, lets all just get-along-nicely, nothing I said was intended to offend, so I'll refrain from providing any further possibly useful observations.

You could not be more wrong. Yes we are primarily a design agency but implying that we dont look after our hosting customers is untrue. We host the majority of our design clients and always have done. It has only been recently when we decided to offer it publicly.

 

I second this. I am with Peartree on their hosting, from a few days ago and their support is fantastic, even though I was contstantly bugging them. I did have some trouble setting up my nameservers, but PearTree helped me all the way.

 

This is not the first time where I have seen Wesh imply things on PearTree based on speculation only, there support system is there but you need to have an account with them first before you log in.

I second this. I am with Peartree on their hosting, from a few days ago and their support is fantastic, even though I was contstantly bugging them. I did have some trouble setting up my nameservers, but PearTree helped me all the way.

 

This is not the first time where I have seen welsh imply things on PearTree based on speculation only, there support system is there but you need to have an account with them first before you log in.

 

Hi Steve

 

Great to hear that your with Peartree, and that they are indeed fantastic, its always great to hear of others doing a great job, especially in this industry where the "big guns" walk all over customers like dirt...

 

I'm not "implying" things, I'm making the same "assumptions" any customer might make based on lack of information, thats all. If somebody has next to no information on something they push quite a lot, then how is any customer to find out more info for themselves? Its observation based critism, the helpful kind that we all need from time to time which gives us all an outside perspective.

 

ps, it's "WESH", not welsh lol (No offence to the welsh of course)

Hi Steve

 

Great to hear that your with Peartree, and that they are indeed fantastic, its always great to hear of others doing a great job, especially in this industry where the "big guns" walk all over customers like dirt...

 

I'm not "implying" things, I'm making the same "assumptions" any customer might make based on lack of information, thats all. If somebody has next to no information on something they push quite a lot, then how is any customer to find out more info for themselves? Its observation based critism, the helpful kind that we all need from time to time which gives us all an outside perspective.

 

ps, it's "WESH", not welsh lol (No offence to the welsh of course)

 

Ok, fair enough in that case I aplogise for saying you were implying, although I do see that making such assumptions has the same effect. Also I want to point out that my choice of Pear Tree was not based on 'going into the unknown' I had some personal conversations with a few clients who are on this message board and heard good things. As well as this I started a thread about it.

 

So... I am a client and I did not make assumptions and I still went with them based on the same information. I did not look at the site and say 'hey, they do this or that' without any knowledge whatsoever. 'Lack of knowlege' didnt lead me to make assumptions based on speculation.

 

On a side note, If i am to be perfectly honest I would not sign up with their hosting based on the information from their website alone, and that is primarily because I recognise them as a design company. It was only when I spoke to people about it that I made the decision to go with them.

On top of this, I did also look at your site as well Wesh, and I do think that this debate primarily comes down to the difference in ethics of how you run your businesses. By the way, neither are right or wrong, rather 'yin and yang'.

 

Its early days with Pear Tree, but I have had a very personal service with them which I like. Rob who has provided support to me puts lots of smiley faces in his messages , ha.

 

I am also with Clook and their 'ethics' are different also, stilla a great service.

Hi

There are thousands of hosting companies.

 

I looked at what others recommended and it came down to the simple choice of either krystal or Peartree.

 

I knew in advance that both would offer an excellent service, because as well as reading the posts of others, their own posts are always worded perfectly.

 

I had spoken to Krystal at an earlier stage and that swung the vote. However, I say “Good luck, to both companies”, because I once had dealings with one company who were utter crap for better a word.

 

Therefore, I personally hope people go strongly with those whom others recommend and get the right package - at the first time of asking.

 

Peter... News-at -Ten somewhere over the Rainbow.