Good hosting companies?

[SGirl]

Like many others, I switched to a certain hosting company a while back when Jamie Beeston did a runner from his company.

That was a while ago. The new company was good initially, but I'm now very fed up with their seeming ineptitude with emails. I'm spammed half to death, but if I ramp up the spam intercepting function it intercepts most of my mail.

But that's not the biggest problem. About a month ago, they had some sort of attack on their mail servers. It took a few days to resolve, and in that time a lot of mail was delayed. They claim it's been fixed, but mail has never really been the same since. Today, I thought it was very quiet - turns out their mail servers weren't collecting my incoming mail. Then they dumped a load of mail on me about 6 hours later, and I noticed a message in the service section on the site saying they'd fixed a problem 2 days ago. So I tried to use their online chat - nope, doesn't work. So instead, I opened a support ticket. That was 2 hours ago, and so far nobody has bothered to get back to me. In the meantime, I've received one "sorry, we've had to give the job to someone else" email, but the original job offer still hasn't turned up.

So I've had enough. Who's good these days? I'm mid-contract with this lot, but I don't really mind losing the money because I really need my mail to be reliable. It's embarrassing having to constantly apologise to clients for having not replied to their mails!

Thanks for any good ideas.

[Mr Pointy]

If you're talking email hosting why don't you go Office 365 or Gmail Suite? You can use your own domain with either & the cost is around £10 a month.

[wheelerc]

Agreed, go with a dedicated email provider and a good host. Your web developer can probably recommend a good host for the language/platform they use.

You get what you pay for with hosting so if your only spending a few pounds per month you will get about 60 seconds of support time if you are lucky.

[jammy-git]

Yup, I use some very good hosting companies (Krystal Hosting and UK Fast for managed hosting), but still exclusively use G Suite for business email services.

[SGirl]

I just run a small business, so all I want is somewhere to host my little website and my email. If I can avoid it, I don't really want to use a business email service that's separate from website hosting as it seems to be paying twice for the same thing. Not to mention having to manage two separate things - time is always at a premium, so if I can do everything under one roof, so much the better.

Thanks for the info so far, any other names?

And an update on the situation. Emails from this afternoon are still trickling in. I posted my support ticket just before 2pm today and I still haven't had a response. I'm going to move the account elsewhere this weekend.

[NorthDave]

SGirl said:

I just run a small business, so all I want is somewhere to host my little website and my email. If I can avoid it, I don't really want to use a business email service that's separate from website hosting as it seems to be paying twice for the same thing. Not to mention having to manage two separate things - time is always at a premium, so if I can do everything under one roof, so much the better.

Thanks for the info so far, any other names?

And an update on the situation. Emails from this afternoon are still trickling in. I posted my support ticket just before 2pm today and I still haven't had a response. I'm going to move the account elsewhere this weekend.

You won't get better email than Gmail in my opinion. Once it's setup - which is easy - you don't need to do anything. It is zero maintenance.

I'd personally just do it once and do it properly. Lost email is already costing you money.

[SGirl]

Does G Suite offer a catchall option?

And if I move my email to G Suite this weekend, can I still leave my website hosted with TSO?

I agree, I'm fed up with substandard hosting costing me work. And they still haven't responded to my support request. I'm off - it's just a matter of deciding where!

[SGirl]

I've had a look round - any opinions on SiteGround?

[jammy-git]

SGirl said:

I've had a look round - any opinions on SiteGround?

Performance can be quite good with SG, but customer service can be mixed. Many stories about them using frustrating billing techniques and then not offering refunds. Which I myself experienced when I was with them.

Can't recommend Krystal highly enough.

Also yes, you can move to G Suite at any time regardless of who you're web hosting is with. You just need to change a couple of things under DNS settings.

[SGirl]

Great, thank you very much! Just what I wanted to know.

I'm going to get something sorted this weekend so that I'm ready for next week.

[Mr Pointy]

If you wanted to keep it all together Zen's customer service is very good:
https://www.zen.co.uk/hosting

[C722]

What roughly would a web developer charge to switch from a web hosted email provider to gmail?

Edited by C722 on Saturday 14th September 10:38

[Mr Pointy]

C722 said:

What roughly would a web developer charge to switch from a web hosted email provider to gmail?

Why would you need a developer? In general it's a pretty easy process & there are loads of guides on the internet showing how to do it - including Google's own help pages. You need to be a bit organised & one of the trickier steps can be getting the old legacy email up into your Gmail account.

[C722]

Because I’m not great at that sort of stuff, and peace of mind of not losing years of emails!

[NorthDave]

SGirl said:

Does G Suite offer a catchall option?

And if I move my email to G Suite this weekend, can I still leave my website hosted with TSO?

I agree, I'm fed up with substandard hosting costing me work. And they still haven't responded to my support request. I'm off - it's just a matter of deciding where!

Yes - you can do this very easily. There will be loads of guides and youtube videos but it is quite straight forward.

[Mr Pointy]

C722 said:

Because I’m not great at that sort of stuff, and peace of mind of not losing years of emails!

If you move to a hosting company they will help you migrate but I guess what you want is just some technical assistance rather than hosting. I suggest you put up a new post in "Computers, Gadgets & Stuff" & give it a good descriptive title & see if anyone responds. I think a few people who follow that forum might be able to assist.

[bitchstewie]

Honestly, split it out and go with G Suite or Office 365.

The people who may be a perfectly sensible choice to use to host a website aren't necessarily the same people who are a sensible choice to host your email, the thing that most businesses depend on.

[ctrph]

My recommendation would be hosting with Krystal, the best host I have been with and I have used a few. Email with G suite, easy to use both on desktop and the mobile app.

Have had this combination for about 18 months now and have no intention of changing as it works so well.

[SGirl]

Thanks for all the info. I’ve spoken to a couple of options and I’m going to switch to Krystal.

I might have to have a new website done now, I think. Mine is ancient and was never all that great! Anyone on here offering good rates for a relatively straightforward site?

[jammy-git]

You won't regret going with Krystal. I was a customer of their's more than 5 years ago and they offered good customer service then. Since then I've used GoDaddy, SiteGround, AWS, Linode, Digital Ocean, Vidahost (then Tsohost, then bought by GoDaddy), Elastichosts, Future Hosting, Pickaweb, etc, etc. None of them have been as good as Krystal and now I'm back with them!

As for your website - is this the one linked to in your profile? I would certainly agree with the decision to get it redone. The fact that it still uses Adobe Flash means it's broken by default in Chrome and will be really harming your search engine optimisation. Do you have a budget for getting it redone?