By kevancummins on

Hi

I'm looking for a UK company to host our new Drupal site. The current non-drupal site gets around 200,000 unique visitors per month and around 1.5 million page hits. Ths hosting company needs to be in the UK and have good connectivity as the sites users are from around the globe. We also want a high level support service from the company..

If anyone has had good expereince with a company that could be suitable then I'd welcome any recomendations

Kevan

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

fronbow’s picture

fronbow commented

Hey matey

Have you thought about getting your own server? (That's what we did, and never looked back) - tho' it does mean we're paying around £50/month. And I have to manage it!

I'd steer clear of 1and1, fasthosts, webfusion, and evo hosting. The first 3 don't seem to have a clue about 'modern' hosting (or support come to think of it!), and the last one doesn't seem to be able to cope with load at times.

You could try 34sp.com - I host a personal website with them and their support is second to none, and they know what they're talking about (they've been around for 7years). Their office is based in Manchester and the servers are in London IIRC. If you go with them, tell them I sent you ;)
(They use Plesk for their control panels, and they do business accounts as well as personal accounts. And like I said, their support is very very good.

But, if you were to go with your own server, you'd be in charge of what software goes on - I'm not sure on the state of play with uk hosts and php5 - which you'll want to consider given that php4 will be unsupported as of February

gareth_w’s picture

gareth_w commented

Nativespace.com

Can't comment on a "big" site, but they run my small-medium size sites fine. I will personally reccomend these as I have had nothing bu excellent service from their support department - to the extent where they are now e-mailing out to me with possible future issues to try and help resolving them.

My only connection with them is as a highly satisfied customer.

Gareth

dubovik’s picture

dubovik commented

managing a server by yourself could lead into problems if you do no have adequate system administration skills..

tanoshimi’s picture

tanoshimi commented

Are there companies that provide managed dedicated hosting? i.e. You get your own server, configured to your requirements, but the hosting company will actually do the set-up for you...? I will shortly have need for a very similar site - 1.5m hits/month, 250,000 pageviews/month, 5Gb transferred / month, so i'd be very interested if you find a good host in the UK...

DrupalValueHosting’s picture

DrupalValueHosting commented

Hi

DrupalvalueHosting.com provides managed dedicated hosting services.
We have our own rack space and own boxes at Dallas.

Here is more detailed info and server specs:
http://drupalvaluehosting.com/members/announcements.php

Here is a testimonial:
http://drupal.org/node/110531#comment-641231

If you seek the best infrastructure and managed environment, you can reach me at my email id.
Lowest industry rates guaranteed!

Regards,
Steve

steve@DrupalValueHosting.com

fronbow’s picture

fronbow commented

We have our own rack space and own boxes at Dallas.

Steve, the original poster is looking for a UK based host (it makes things easier when you need support if you're in the same timezone!)

DrupalValueHosting’s picture

DrupalValueHosting commented

Hi fronbow,

yes i agree.. I should have mentioned this that we are based in States not in UK.

Steve
steve@DrupalValueHosting.com

PS: we do have round the clock support for our dedicated servers though (fully managed)

kevancummins’s picture

kevancummins commented

Hi thanks for all the help replies so far...

Just to clarify that I'm looking for names of suitable companies to approach for quotes for an annual service plan to host a high spec dedicated server for our site with a high level of support and site availabilty. The hosting company should have excellent connectivity to the server as our site is accessed globally but the server must be hosted in the UK.

Maybe I'm asking the wrong question - it might make more sense to ask if anyone knows of any Drupal sites hosted in the UK that have several hundred thousand users and which need excellent connectivity and site availablilty support (one site I can think of is the MTV site for the UK with lots of users accessing the videos on the site). I can then try to find out which company is hosting the sites server and contact them directly for a quote. We don;t want to take the route of hosting the site on our own servers.

If you know of any other large UK drupal sites then maybe you can suggest them here. I have been looking on the Drupal Showcase forums and on Dryers blog site but am having difficult finding other big name UK based Drupal sites.

Kevan

fronbow’s picture

fronbow commented

I think you'll find the big corporate websites use their own servers. If you do a whois on mtv.co.uk you'll see they have their own datacentre.

It sounds to me like you need to go the managed server route. So, you'll either need to pay the hosting company to setup and look after the server for you or do the looking after it yourself (or employ a sysadmin to look after it). They'll possibly need to have their servers in London, I think the main datacentre is TeleHouse or something like that?
You don't really need to know about drupal friendly hosts unless you're going the Shared Hosting route, if you're going the managed server route you just need to make sure the server is up to the job, and the host is on a good connection/on or near the backbone!

kevancummins’s picture

kevancummins commented

Hi fronbow

Thanks for this - really useful info. We are now looking at a managed server route and have contacted several companies for quotes and will hopefully have a dedicated server soon :)

Kevan

chameleonwebhosting’s picture

chameleonwebhosting commented

While we do not offer managed dedicated servers as yet, we can offer you a custom shared hosting plan with plenty of space and bandwidth that you would need for your site. And we are based in the UK with datacenters in both the UK and the US.

We don't actively advertise this, so if you are interested, please either email me, or use the Contact Us form on our site.

The link is in the signature.

Chameleon Webhosting

www.eukhost.com’s picture

www.eukhost.com commented

Since you are looking for a web hosting provider with servers based in UK, you may have a look at our website in my signature. All our servers are fully managed.

UK Web Hosting

georgeb’s picture

georgeb commented

For these numbers I think dedicated server is oneway. We use 49pence-rapidswitch without problems and good connentivity. Hope it helps

Markwebuk’s picture

Markwebuk commented

Hello Kevan,

Don't pay extra for the server management. Opt for the web hosting provider offering free server management with the Dedicated server.

Web Hosting UK | VPS Hosting

manu888’s picture

manu888 commented

Hey Kevan,

Which hoster have you choosed eventually? Are you satisfied?

kevancummins’s picture

kevancummins commented

I went with a UK company called Rackspace to Host the Drupal Site in the UK. We launch the site in April and I'll put the URL on the showcase forum when it's launched. I'm very satisfied with the overall package but will have to wait until after launch to get feedback from users in Asia and Africa on speed etc.

Kevan