Actinic Hosting

[fourone]

Hi there,

Could anyone advise me on who would be a good hosting company to use to host my Actinic site with? I'm currently with Fasthosts but I've been advised to go elsewhere as there can be a lot of complications with them. I've had a quick look through the forum without much success so just wondered if anyone could give me a few options to consider.

Many thanks.

[cbarling]

Rich, I would recommend that you go with someone who specialises in hosting Actinic stores.

This includes Actinic ourselves. See http://www.actinic.co.uk/services/ecommerce-hosting.htm

Chris

[Firecom]

We use a dedicated linux server from webfusion. works fine with them so i guess their shared platforms must too.

[Mike Hughes]

Quite a few forum members including myself host with 1and1.

Most linux hosts are fine. It's really just fasthosts that have a problem.

Mike

[chris ashdown]

The mention of Fasthosts on this forum will bring up loads of "dont use them " advise and to be fair some people have had a hard time setting up actinic with fasthosts on shared servers

Myself I have had 6 actinic sites with fasthosts two with MS servers and four with Linex servers since 2003 for the first site andothers from other dates untill last year. Had a big problem in I think 2004 or 5 when they suffered a denial of service attack which they solved reasonably quickly and other minor hickups like any other ISP.

Lee will no doub have an alternative view on the subject when he reads this.

I have now brought a dedicated server with UK to have more control and slowely movin the sites to it, but have no gripes at all with the service and performance of Fasthosts, Have a look at my site internet-workwear, thats running on ms server with fasthosts untill tomorrow when it gets moved

[guccij]

Have a look at my site internet-workwear

Completely OT, but that reminded me we now have to have hi vis jackets in the car by law in France in case of breakdown. Must sort that out as I am going to be herding goats again v soon

[leehack]

Lee will no doub have an alternative view on the subject when he reads this.

No need for deep thoughts on this Chris, plain old common sense is more than ample. 99 people with problems, you the only public forumite without. In addition fasthosts themselves saying in B&W that actinic does not work on their servers. That is a done deal with no need for anything extra . Only a politician could make something of that, but I don't think they'd even label a 99% error rate with the word 'some' as you did .

It's not a fasthosts crusade Chris, I have an ASP.net site hosted with them as they offer the best Windows hosting around IMO. They just don't work with Actinic or present users with an easy way to use them. I would love to know why yours is fine though I must say, very strange. I'm tending to lean towards you having gone mad and not actually using them .

[Paul Bulpit]

you the only public forumite without.

No he's not, I too was with them for a while and I did not have any operational problems. However my reseller moved me after FH had a serious password hack danger at the end of 2007.

The reseller's alternative choice proved to be a very expensive disaster - after dumping him I now have a dedicated server with 1and1 but that has not been without some minor difficulties.

Fair play to Post #2 for getting in quick, but CB has an axe to grind and I don't believe in putting all the eggs in one basket.

I would suggest Pinbrook for Actinic experience yet separate from the Towers.

[Paul Bulpit]

Completely OT, but that reminded me we now have to have hi vis jackets in the car by law in France in case of breakdown. Must sort that out as I am going to be herding goats again v soon

Two a penny. I've got one from a saddlery that says 'Thank you for being considerate to horse riders' on the back and another covered in oil stains that I picked up in some motorway roadworks.

Alternatively, hire a car abroad then keep the one in the glovebox when you take it back!

[leehack]

No he's not, I too was with them for a while and I did not have any operational problems. However my reseller moved me after FH had a serious password hack danger at the end of 2007.

It's March 2009 Paul. I hosted 4 or 5 sites with them back in 2006-2007 myself, but that has no bearing on them today, that's the past. The last 12 months or so has been rife with problems on their servers, so something must have changed one would expect.

[leehack]

In fact what you mention may just point to the reason for this. The mass hack they had clearly was embarassing and steps were made to tighten up that area. Perhaps that was the signal of the start of the problems. I can recall being forced to change all passwords because of the breach. Timings fit at least if nothing else.

[Ho Ho Bird]

I'm not a demanding user with huge traffic, but have had no problems with Fasthosts. Worked from day one.

[leehack]

Their issues used to relate solely to cgi-bin timeout. As I understood it, they only allowed a certain amount of time for a transaction to occur. This timing was very close to what would break actinic, so intermittent problems could occur. Where it really showed up was on large orders, with multiple items, especially at busy times, this seemed to take things over the edge and kill the process. Very few users will actually have ever taken the time to tell site owners about this though, they just move onto somewhere else to buy.

There must be more successful users, of that i am in no doubt, so far we have yourself, Paul that used them up until 15-16 months ago and we have Chris who has always been fine with them, but is now leaving. Even if 10 more successful stories surfaced, it would still be a massive lean towards problems.

They don't offer anything over and above any successful actinic host, so however large or small the issue might be or however my bias is perceived, it really isn't worth the risk if you are serious about your website IMO.

[Paul Bulpit]

Lee, I take your point and fully concur. I wasn't sorry to leave them at the end of the day - I was just trying to say that back then, I personally did not have any operational Actinic issues, even though others were complaining vehemently. Neither did Chris, who still doesn't.

But then two of us swallows don't make a summer - eighteen months is a very long era in this epoch! (Or should that be the other way round?)

[Jan]

I host with Actinic and 4surehosting and have hosted with Pinbrook in the past (moved only because I had specialist requirements and wanted shared hosting). I would say to avoid 4surehosting - we will be moving all sites over to Actinic hosting when our year runs out, they were taken over recently and service isn't so good. Actinic hosting is great, no problems with email and my site is never down and Pinbrook is also very good.

Regards,