Need to get a better idea of which website host would be best for you? Here’s a rundown of website hosts I’ve used in my capacity as a consultant, business user and personal user.
Rather than a comprehensive review, this is my perspective of these providers. Some I’ve used more than others and in different capacities. If you’re looking for the thoughts of your mate down the pub without any affiliate links or sponsored content in any way, this is the review for you.
TLDR
I hate being strung along by a huge pre-amble, so here’s the meat, take it and leave or stay for more in-depth opinions.
If you just want the quick answer, TLDR:
TSO Host
Great for just being a host, but support is not as good as it was, so I’d avoid them.*
123-reg
Expensive, but trustworthy and can be good for beginners. I haven’t really needed to use their support. They’ve taken over TSO Host.
Crazydomains
Cheap and cheerful, they help you to get up and running quickly, not the best option for hosting (the clue to where they specialise is in their name), but it works.
Fasthosts
They offer all the settings you need and also have great hosting packages that can grow easily with your business.
Greengeeks
Offer a decent service, certainly they like to keep their servers secure, but disappointing support and they will restrict Googlebot visits, despite telling you otherwise. However, I would recommend them.
Ionos
Good secure service, but less user friendly than other hosts with fewer features out of the box such as charging to secure multiple domains with a basic SSL.
Avecoh
They charge individually for absolutely everything even when it’s not really necessary and their own website is stuck in the mid 2000s. Avoid.
*TSO Host have been absorbed by Godaddy and now only have a holding page using a ‘supportcenter’ subdomain of their URL. I’ve left my thoughts on them here for context of things to look out for when choosing a host.
Choosing A Website Host
Choosing a good, reliable website hosting partner can be a challenge because let’s be honest, all services are more or less the same. They host your website and they’re all going to claim 99.99999999%* uptime.
*maybe not exactly that number, but basically yeah.
From my perspective, the biggest differences are:
- how they package themselves and appeal to users with different levels of technical knowledge
- how easy it is to use their service
- how easy it is to get help when you need it
Price could be what ultimately helps you decide, but more important than price are the small details of what your host gives you, assists you with (or how they hinder you) when trying to manage your website that should be the deciding factor. Since you’ve decided to stay for more in-depth opinions on each host, I’m going to share my experiences in:
– what to avoid
– extra charges
– problems you could run into
To be clear, I won’t be going through set categories to compare all hosts.
Hosts I’m experienced using for both myself and when managing client websites:
TSO Host
123-reg
Crazydomains
Fasthosts
Greengeeks
Ionos
Avecoh
I will also mention the services some of them offer as domain registrars. All of the hosts mentioned here offer both services and I have used most of them to purchase or manage domain names.
TSO Host
I used to really love TSO Host, now fully absorbed by Godaddy, and my thoughts here were from just before the TSO Host brand was retired. I’ve left my opinions about TSO Host in for context. I remember when I first began to create my own hobby websites, I researched several companies to host with and they were the company I chose. I was not disappointed.
I still remember the first time I signed up with them. I went to the bank to initiate a transfer so that I could start using their services as I did not have a credit card at the time. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. Over the course of three to five years, I never had a problem with them.
I set up my websites, managed WordPress databases with phpMyAdmin and had FTP access. I created branded email accounts accessible through their control panel, a webmail interface or forwarded to another mailbox. I decided to use Gmail to send a receive email from the hosted domains which was very convenient…and professional.
Great Support
For around the first four years I was with them, support was amazing. Response time was very quick and they resolved my problems. Their staff made me feel respected and I always felt as though they listened to what I had to say.
TSO Host’s support team at that time were truly excellent, but that good run came to an end. A little after they were taken over by GoDaddy. I left because I felt their service on the technical side wasn’t for me. Apparently, things just went downhill since then. Just search for some online reviews of TSO Host (which I’m sure are still around) to see what I’m talking about.
Leaving TSO Host
Although not the direct driver of my departure from TSO Host, the sale to GoDaddy seems to have been the beginning of my problems. Customer service was still great, but technical things seemed to be going wrong more and more.
The issues were just little niggling things. I didn’t really experience problems when they needed to perform maintenance and moved my sites from one server to another. You’ll see in a later review other hosting companies do have these problems when they complete such migrations. With TSO Host at least, there was no disruption, but things just didn’t feel like they were before.
Prices started going up after the GoDaddy takeover, with TSO Host increasing the price of their basic service and offering less for that increase. The service was still reliable, but I couldn’t really justify paying more money than I started out when I felt as though I was getting less.
TSO Host Takeover
TSO Host have recently been taken over by 123-reg, who are also owned by GoDaddy, so perhaps this is a business restructuring exercise. When you read my thoughts on 123-reg’s services, you’ll notice their desire to charge for everything individually matches what TSO Host started to do.
For best results in a takeover, it’s important for the culture of both companies to align because the culture of the larger organisation will (almost) always come to dominate. I guess what I experienced is part of establishing a new company culture as a result of the GoDaddy takeover?
A lot of packages and upselling seems to be the mark of hosts looking to increase revenue.
My Verdict
Despite the negatives, TSO Host have always been reliable, but I’d probably avoid them. In a pinch and for smaller websites, they’re still worth a go if the price is right. Or would have if they still existed.
123-reg
Expensive, but trustworthy and potentially good for beginners because they do have products to help you get going with minimal technical knowledge. The clue is in the name because their specialist area is domain name registration.
Domain Name Specialists
I’ve had a great experience buying domains from 123-reg and my very first domain names were purchased from them. I do find they charge towards the higher end for domain names.
On the hosting side, they like to charge a lot for everything they possibly can. Their business model is to up-sell everything, offering very basic functionality at the lower service levels.
Not related directly to their own hosting services, but unlike other domain resellers with whom I’d keep the DNS pointed at their name servers, I’m more likely to point my domain’s DNS away from 123-reg.
My Verdict
As with many others, If you only need a place to park your website, you’re in the right place. It’s quite expensive just to host a basic website as 123-reg doesn’t really offer many useful features with their lowest level package. For this reason, you’ll need to pay a lot more to host a basic WordPress website when compared to others mentioned here.
What’s great about 123-reg is they do actually offer telephone support. I haven’t needed to use any of their support services (except perhaps a few times in the distant past for their domain services given I’ve been a customer for almost 20 years now), so I can’t really comment on that but it is a bonus some others don’t provide.
As for the hosting, 123-reg have taken over TSO Host, so perhaps that review above is now going to be directly relevant to 123-reg?
Crazydomains
Cheap and cheerful, they’ll help you to get up and running quickly with generally industry standard pricing, but most of my experience with them is on their domain sales side.
Crazydomans’ prices are okay, but may not be that great when you consider they’re not as advanced in areas like support as other brands may be. Their support seems to be quite limited from what I could gather since I haven’t used their website hosting services very much.
Purchasing Domains
Purchasing domain names is where Crazydomains excel and for me, managing multiple domain names (less than 100 at a time in my case and for most people) is pretty straight forward. DNS updates can be very very slow, but they do work. It’s also very easy to control a lot of the domain name functions.
Managing Domains
I prefer to keep DNS with Crazydomains and manage high level functions from their control panel unless there’s a specific reason to use the hosting company’s DNS. Actually, I’m never too impressed if I must change the DNS to a hosting company’s DNS if I want to host a website on their servers.
Domain Backorder Service
I have tried their domain backorder service, but it hasn’t worked out for me, though I think that’s more to do with the domain names not becoming available. However, because I have actively researched domain drop catching and read other people’s comments pertaining to Crazydomains, I’m going to mention it below.
Some people have expressed frustration that Crazydomains did not register their domains even when they became available. I also read another complaint because Crazydomains couldn’t secure their preferred domain name and it got snagged by someone else.
When you enter the world of drop catching, nothing can ever be guaranteed and I don’t think it’s an area of expertise for Crazydomains; only an extra service they can charge for. You’d be much better off going to a specialist drop catching provider.
From complaints I’ve read online, I think Crazydomains’ first line support may not have done a good job communicating with those customers and fell into the trap another organisation I reviewed here does of not being accountable for their service.
My Verdict
To sum up, I’d go with Crazydomains for their new domain registration service, but not their hosting.
Fasthosts
I originally came across Fasthosts using it with a company and client of mine several years ago. I always found their services to be reliable, easy to use and very rarely had any problems with them. The only thing I had that came close to being an issue is when hosting one particular WordPress website.
The PHP memory limit imposed by Fasthost’s hosting platform can be restrictive. However, the PHP memory limit this is only an issue for WordPress websites, its plug-ins and other PHP based CMS if they use themes which are memory hungry. I’m sure that if you upgrade your package, or ask Fasthosts for advice, then they can help you to overcome this. In my use case it was something I could overcome without their assistance.
My Verdict
I haven’t needed to use their support services as everything ran smoothly during the time I used them. Fasthosts are definitely a company I’ll try in a personal capacity with a view to possibly using them for my business websites and future clients.
Greengeeks
Greengeeks sound like a very good option for website hosting, offering an environmentally friendly way to host your website(s) quickly and easily. Let me start out with the positives for these guys because they actually do offer a great service despite a few restrictive elements, the reasons for which I understand.
Secure Servers
One of the best things about Greengeeks is that they attempt to keep their servers very secure. However, they do restrict your ability to achieve simple things which would make your life easier. The main one for me is preventing you from forwarding email from your domain to your Gmail account.
You also won’t be able to send emails from your domains using your Gmail account. For example you can’t receive an email sent to hello@example.com then reply to it from Gmail and have the recipient see you sent your reply from hello@example.com.
Another small downside is that they could very well restrict Googlebot’s access you your website.
Googlebot Restrictions
Greengeeks will restrict Googlebot if it tries to visit your website too often in a short space of time. I believe this is an unintended consequence of their server security. You may notice Google Search Console reports it has 503 errors when trying to crawl your website.
One way this can be overcome depending on the exact issue is by adding a crawl delay to your robots.txt file. Another possibility would be to use a dedicated server and your own IP address to avoid sharing with other websites that may also be crawled by Googlebot. Unfortunately, their support isn’t very helpful in this regard and didn’t offer any solutions to the problem.
Support Issues
Support is an area I think Greengeeks could make improvements. At one point, they changed something on their servers which I believe was some kind of migration. I had set up my domain names to use the DNS provided by the domain name reseller and point to Greengeeks’ servers using an IP address. Which is something I’ve done for years with all webspace providers I’ve worked with.
After Greengeeks made changes on their end, the website(s) hosted with them stopped working, giving me 503 errors. When I asked them about this, they said “[w]e are unable to replicate the issue” and requested I send screenshots. Miraculously after seeing the screenshots, the issue was escalated to their level 2 support team line support. I was told to change the IP address I had pointed at their servers which had been working for several months since I first set it up. I pushed back, showing them a screenshot from UptimeRobot showing the start time of the outage. This is something that had been working. Of course, they would not confirm they had made any changes; I only got their boiler plate response. A response that said I had it wrong, even though the settings had been working for months beforehand.
It appears that they employ people who lack technical knowledge and the ability to be adaptable. The result is when you message them and say hey I’ve got this specific problem for example a 403 error and say “I have a 403 error on x website”, you will get a reply requesting a screenshot of what the error message is.
My Pet Peeve
Not an especially big deal, but something that takes away options for me using Greengeeks is being forced you to use their DNS. When switching away from them, it could certainly take more time for your website to work again because it can take time to propagate DNS changes throughout the internet. At least keeping the DNS pointed to the domain name registrar (which I usually do), any update to an IP address would have an (almost let’s say because there are always exceptions) instant effect.
My Verdict
I actually started out being really impressed by Greengeeks, but now I feel they’re just average. Their good technical service has been offset by their customer support. I’m confident they’ll solve your problems, but if you have any kind of technical knowledge or problem solving instincts, park them and act like a n00b to keep your sanity. Or just delegate to your interns, so they’ll be able to pick up skills in another area.
Their service, independent of any changes they may make, is reliable and I believe it to be very secure. An added bonus is that you’ll be helping the environment. Despite any reservations I’ve raised here, I would still recommend them.
IONOS
I’ve worked with IONOS for a few clients and everything worked smoothly. It seems very easy to use, nothing really got in the way of what I needed to do for my clients. I didn’t really need to use their support so I can’t comment on that, but everything else was good. In light of issues I’m having with other hosting providers, I decided to sign up with them and see what their hosting would be like for me.
Slow Setup Time
Don’t expect IONOS to be super quick getting your service plan up and running when you first sign up with them. I got a message saying “[w]e’re currently checking your order. This can take up to 24 hours in rare cases.”
“Since it is under pending status. I’d like to inform you that every incoming order [goes] thorough security checks. The purpose of these checks is to validate the accuracy and validity of the information provided by our customers, including essential details like contact information and payment details.”
I signed up at a time I could start uploading website files from a local backup that would take the whole day but I wouldn’t need the machine during that day. Alternatively, I could have uploaded the files overnight but the machine I was using isn’t one I’d usually leave on overnight.
What I could have done instead is sign up in the morning and leave it 24hrs to let the verification process take place. The next day, it would be ready to go. A small gripe perhaps, but something to bear in mind if you need to start work immediately.
They hadn’t charged my credit card until everything was ready to go, so I’m not complaining. This is just to remind you to have a plan in place and allow time for delays. I’d say you shouldn’t expect things to get going before seven days after payment has been submitted, (but you may not have been charged yet). This gives you a nice buffer.
Support
Support was quick and easy to deal with regarding the set up time. Also, just as important, they’ve never given me much reason to need them, so take that on board.
Limitations
Databases have a limit with their more basic package, but for most users, 2GB is a very healthy amount of data. Many others offer an unlimited database size, so I’m noting this here.
Domain Name Registration
I purchased a domain name with IONOS because they offered one for free. After just a month or so, I a bunch of spam requests asking me to sell the domain. I’ve received such emails through other domain name registrars, but on no more than two occasions for domains that had been registered and live for many years.
My Verdict
It has generally been a pleasure using their services. I think they’re good, reliable website hosts, but are less user-friendly than others in terms of their user interface.
I think IONOS take the technical aspects of running a domain name seller and hosting business more seriously than most others. It’s for this reason they err on the side of caution when setting up your services and administering your account.
Avecoh
Fortunately I only have experience migrating someone away from these guys, so I’ll keep this short and sweet.
High Price Low Value
MySQL DB’s cost £25 + VAT each when I last enquired a few years ago. ‘Eco-friendly’ email inboxes are charged on a monthly basis, though the price per mailbox comes down the more you order, it’s certainly not cost-effective compared to other hosts.
Manual Processes
Everything seems to be done manually, so a human being will probably be setting up any service you order. That’s the impression I got anyway. I had to extend a web hosting service before I could execute a website migration. I paid for their service, but it wasn’t connected automatically and I had to follow up by email. At that point, one of their support staff gave me the log in credentials I needed to get things going by email. Yes, a human sent the setup deails manually from their work email address, not an automated one.
Upsell On Everything
The kicker for me on the up-sells is their SEO by the page deals. There’s a package for 5, 10, 15 and 20 page websites which include exactly the same service items.
I can’t comment on the quality of their SEO service, but from the outside, it looks like they charge a fixed amount to edit your title tags, meta descriptions, and a few other on-page optimisations. No link building, reputation management or the hundreds of other things that can move the needle. Anything more than what they offer is not even practical for £195+VAT per month, but there are other companies that will do exactly the same as they propose and charge more for the same cookie cutter report every month.
Could their SEO package work at their higher end price point? Perhaps, but (100% white hat) results would take longer than the three month minimum term they request in any remotely competitive industry. It all depends on the website’s starting point, its competitors and the niche it’s operating in. I guess it also depends on what could be defined as a ‘result’.
My Verdict
Personally, I wouldn’t bother with Avecoh, also known as Atlantic Vision, even though they offer a ‘carbon free hosting platform developed with the planet in mind’. If you do happen to be looking for high quality internet solutions that don’t cost the earth, Avecoh is not the company for you; I’d go with Greengeeks instead.
Their support team definitely were a credit to the company, but nothing else left me with a positive impression.
Conclusion
All of the hosts mentioned here can do a job for you if you choose them. The differences are small between the better providers, but I’d go with Fasthosts or Greengeeks right now. The only host I would definitely never work with is Avecoh.
Choose Greengeeks
or
Fasthosts
IONOS
In general, all hosts will offer some kind of domain name services and it’s up to you if you take advantage, but often you can get a ‘first domain is free’ offer and I say why not? You may then find you’re on the hook at a much higher rate than you would get at the place you’d normally renew domains so at that point, you transfer the domain.
Absolutely avoid those that charge for basic things like forwarding your email or even having email accounts.
Finally, I’ve read advice to avoid Bluehost and companies they own and this seems to be reflected in my actual experience. Have a read for yourself in the link above if you’d like to do a final check before deciding on who you want to use as your website host.