This past week and a half I have “moved home” in more ways than one. Not only have I had to move EVERYTHING out of the house we bought 8 months ago so that electricians can re-wire the entire place, but I have also moved this blog to a new home with PeartreeUK. The result is I have been unbelievably busy, have no electricity at home (or sofa, or bed) and the 3rd part of my YUI: Javascript Carousel series has been delayed.
Web Hosting is a minefield…
Seeing the web hosting feature in the latest edition of .net Magazine has confirmed my feelings about the web hosting industry: it’s a minefield. A completely over saturated market of small-fry & big brands, most of which you will never have heard of unless you’ve heard a horror story or two. In my experience it doesn’t seem to matter where you turn, something unexpected goes wrong.
For years I was a happy client of Lonex. Their support was good enough although there was no status page, the servers were reliable, and generally things went ok. Then they got DDoSed and never recovered – my sites suffered downtime a few times a week, everything was slow, and I couldn’t get support to acknowledge or fix the problem.
So I moved to Surpass: a seemingly huge company with a public community, status pages, good support, and reliable service. Then I started work on this blog and found the pages loaded really slowly. I queried this and after ages of back and forth with support I got a message which simply read: “Thanks for your patience. We have completed some work on this server and performance is back to normal. Thanks for hanging in there.” – Nothing had changed as far as I was concerned.
Next I opened a single account on PeartreeUK and started prepping my blog for launch. For some reason I couldn’t get WordPress to work properly. In my frustration I gave up without giving them a chance and tried yet another company.
This time it was Clook. A more expensive company but they had good reviews from friends so I figured I’d get what I paid for. My blog had the same WordPress problems & I realised it was entirely my fault. So I got it all fixed and launched my blog on Clook.
4 months later and I have two niggles with Clook:
- Because Apache is running as “noone” PHP scripts create files that I can’t delete through FTP. There is no way to remove the files through the control panel so I have had to install a PHP File manager which I really don’t like. It just makes my life far more complicated than it needs to be, especially when trying to work with a publishing platform like WordPress.
- For some reason there is no way to setup recurring payments. I have to remember to pay my bill each month. Yet again just something dumb that makes my life harder than it needs to be.
PeartreeUK – my Web Hosting Solution
So last weekend I decided to finally sort out my hosting life. With all my resold accounts still hanging around on slowly-slowly-Surpass, and my blog on clunky-Clook, I’ve turned back to the one place I know I’ll get what I pay for – PearTreeUK. They may be relatively small, but there’s nothing like being able to get hold of an intelligent human being whenever you need one! Having kept my original account open as a test bed, I have now upgraded to a reseller with them.
I doubt you will find better customer service than PeartreeUK’s - having one person consistently deal with you from day one means that you are always taken care of without the frustration of trying to explain yourself AGAIN everytime there’s a shift-change. If you’ve visited here before you may notice how much faster pages (and FTP) now loads – my WordPress backend feels like it’s on speed. Add to that their prices & the excellent attitude of their employees and you have a value-for-money service that I highly recommend.
Note: Expect an update post in 6 months documenting my experiences with Peartree!
19th Aug
Curvball says:
Glad to see you’re with PearTreeUK – great service, and by far the best hosting company I’ve ever dealt with.
19th Aug
ErisDS says:
How long have you used their services? It’s always good to hear great feedback from people who have been there much longer than I.
19th Aug
Wizely says:
Sorry to hear of your ‘loss of habitat’ sis… I’d offer you lodgings with all the amenities but I’d expect you’d only get prissy about the webcam in your room and shower!
Anyhoo… as you know I’m intrinsically bound to your hosting choices and I have to say that switching to Peartree has seen about a tenfold speed increase if nothing else. I couldn’t believe how fast it was to upload things… I was double-uploading in Filezilla because files went so fast that I wasn’t sure they’d uploaded (they had of course!).
Hopefuly Peartree will turn out to be stable too (my main concern with hosting following past experiences!).
20th Aug
Magmoman says:
Wow, that’s a lot of companies! I’m sorry you had to go through all that, but I’m glad you found one that worked for you. I’m using Bluehost, and haven’t had any troubles yet (knock on wood :))
2nd Sep
ben says:
Hi,
I am having similar problems with Clook. I can’t get wordpress set-up correctly as it has trouble writing to directories all the time. It had no problems on bluehost but I soon outgrew their solution.
Now that your blog runs on pear tree does every just “work”… you know automatic updates, add/delete plugins, image uploads etc.
I don’t want to go through the same thing where I have to set the owner/group to “no-one” to get everything working and then I can’t modify files via ftp.
If you could let me know that would REALLY help!
2nd Sep
ErisDS says:
Hi Ben,
Providing all the initial file permissions are set correctly (uploads directory set to 777 etc) then yep PeartreeUK Just. Works.
I no longer have any problems running upgrades, updating plugins or managing any other files. And I was having an absolutely nightmare on Clook. Clook are a good company, but their server setup is not tailored for people using things like WordPress. PeartreeUK on the other hand have a setup that stops all those irritating permissions problems.
I strongly suggest you try them out! Speak to Rob, tell him I sent you & I promise you won’t be disappointed!
4th Sep
Web Host Reviews says:
I can’t get wordpress set-up correctly as it has trouble writing to directories all the time. It had no problems on bluehost but I soon outgrew their solution.
16th Sep
It's been a Very Quiet Month... | Musings of ErisDS pinged back:
[...] my last post explained, I’ve had my house rewired and since redecorated. I had to pack my computer up in a box for 3 [...]
20th Dec
christopher says:
i’m with surpass, moaned on twitter, and they moved me to their uk reseller. its only me and one other customer on there atm and its miles better.
13th Jan
turisuna says:
It can be so difficult to choose good web hosting that match with our needs. I have moved to different web hosting for four times in these last three years. I hope I don’t need to move again, I’m tired with troubles.
13th Jan
ErisDS says:
May I ask who you are with now and what companies you’ve tried?
I’ve tried so many – more than those listed in this post. PearTree continue to be fantastic. I really should post a follow up to this post.
2nd May
rose says:
hi, im totally ignorant to web hosting, my daughter has just set up a web site to sell lingerie online, i think she paid too much for her web site to be made, about £1500, as it seems people do them much cheaper. she then found she had to pay £70 for the year to have it “hosted” by someone the web site designer allocated to it. as far as i can see apart from making it live, they dont do much else, she can add new items and delete old items herself but can add text or make space for “where did you see us advertised” the hoster said they can do it but it will cost. also shes noticed the background on her website is not how it was designed, its meant ot be like a 2 tone flock wallpaper, but looks like one solid colour. i dont think shes even got tech help if the site crashes unless she pays again. what should she expect from a web host? thanks inadvance
2nd May
ErisDS says:
Firstly, £1500 for an ecommerce site is extremely cheap. I certainly wouldn’t be able to provide you with that service for less than 3 or 4 times that amount. Therefore I think the fundamental problem with your daughter’s website is that she has paid too little for the site, not too much. For the money paid, there would certainly be no long-term support included. I would guess that going to one of these “cheaper” people you’ve found would result in an even less satisfactory experience.
However, you should check what was asked for, hopefully there is a contract or at the least an email trail. If your daughter signed off a visual design which has not been achieved (and this was not discussed or agreed) or if she asked for features that are not available (like adding additional text herself) then you should be able to go back to the designer and discuss the matter.
Your web designer/developer is the person who should offer you support, amends and updates to a website, not the host. There will be an additional fee as the £1500 paid was for the design of the site and for building the website with the design and features agreed. Anything additional to what was agreed would incur an additional cost. This is the way our industry works, the same as if you buy a new car, you would still have to pay if you decided to upgrade to a CD player afterwards! Updates might be charged on an individual basis, or if you think there will be a large volume, try negotiating a monthly price for a support contract.
Finally, the £70 paid for hosting is not for the action of making the site live, rather to cover the monthy/yearly cost of having the website online. The hosting company are responsible for maintaining both the computer that the website sits on, and the connection to it. They have to make sure that it is always available via the internet, cover the costs of their own internet connection and ensure that the computer is secure and cannot be influenced by outsiders (hackers). I pay around £10 a month for hosting, but for larger websites it can cost anywhere from £200 per month upwards. £70 a year is again, very cheap for the service you are being provided.
2nd May
rose says:
hi Eris, thanks for reply, youve given me a lot of info, i shall take my time and read through it.
her site was looking fine at first, its something that happend later.
the web desinger said if she needed any changes to her site then it was now in the hands of the host. but anyway, thanks again for info ill have a good read.
13th May
ErisDS says:
I really hope I managed to help a little bit? I also hope that you & your daughter have managed to find some arrangement you’re happy with for getting updates completed. I’m very surprised the web designer handed this off to the host, can I ask who the hosts are?
Eris