Best actinic Host?

[giant_u]

Hi,

I'm currently with Fasthosts, with a couple of Actinic sites, but can't get a third working,even though I'm using the same settings!

Time to move.

Any reccommendations, other than using Actinic's own hosting (which seems a bit pricey)?

I'm thinking of Web Fusion - any experiences to tell?!

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Luke

[Duncan Rounding]

There are many, search the forum and you will see this has been discussed many times before. You can choose between a big gun such as webfusion or specialist hosts such as pinbrook.
I personally use 1and1 and have been very pleased overall. It's easy to setup and their uptime has been compareable to most others.

[Dave Fisher]

Hi Luke,

I have been with webfusion since august of this year and have been pleased with them up to now.

There was a problem last weekend when some people could not ftp their sites which was very fustrating but the site was still on-line and running normally.

So far thumbs up for webfusion but you could also look at actinic's website for their recommended hosts!

Regards,

Dave

[giant_u]

Thanks Dave for your advice.

Thanks also Duncan, but I spent loads of time yesterday searching the forum for hosting comments, but drew a blank other than one thread suggesting a 'best host' vote. Without meaning to join in here and immediately cause a fuss, wouldn't be nice to have a permanent feature on this? Appart from anything, the hosting world seems very very fluid to me, so the 'best' will change frequently. For instance, I was very pleased with Fasthosts up until about a month ago - now their phone is always busy, the site won't work for no apparent reason and they're still expensive!

[bangers]

I take it from your reply that you haven't heard about fasthosts security breach which caused them/clients major problems and may be the reason for your problems, you could be "Locked out", they are still trying to sort it out.
See here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12...s_third_reset/

Personally I am surprised that a hosting company can have these ongoing problems that they are still scrambling to sort out but have no mentition of it on their site, don't know whether or not they are keeping customers in the loop via email as I am not a customer.

Good luck,
Bangers

[malcolms]

Hosting

I know this issue has been turned over many times.... but then things do change.

I changed from Stonehenge to Pinbrook 6 months or so ago.

Pinbrook are a small hosting company and are very nice people. They are used to getting Actinic working. Mole End like using them and that was a recommendation to me. The downside is the features are not as rich as with some other hosts. Eg I like to have raw log files which I analyse using a raw log analyser - much better for stats. However, while Pinbrook provide these, they overwrite them after 5 days so I have to schedule a utility to ftp in, download to my hard disc, rename files. Other hosts will consolidate raw log files into monthly, which is better.

Pinbrook's support is ticket based. Sometimes it is not that informed. Eg when I started asking them about log file, they said they never delete them - which seemed unlikely, as they take up a lot of space. A couple of messages later they admitted they had been wrong and they did delete them after the 5th day. Quite a difference.

Like you, I would be concerned that another host might keep me offline for a couple of weeks if an Actinic problem arose; so it is a compromise. From my experience I'd say go to Pinbrook as long as your Internet Marketing needs are not too sophisticated. If they are, check the feature you need/will need are there before you buy.

I use Fasthosts for .co.uk domain hosting, but that's all. I'll make sure not to consider them for non-Actinic hosting now!

All the best.

Malcolm

[Jan]

We had a problem with our Pinbrook server on New Years Eve, we submitted a ticket and it was fixed very quickly (the problem was a faulty patch lead), I thought that was excellent service particularly given the day of the year. I used the standard Pinbrook support channels as well, I didn't go straight to Jo (which I could have done).

Regards,

[Sean Williams]

We switched to UKFast a couple of months ago.
Support is excellent.
And it really is lightening fast, even though we are on a shared server.
They have recently won lots of awards, but this could be down to a very active PR dept

[Quantum]

4SureHosting have been excellent and definately get my vote.

http://www.quantumelectronics.co.uk

[paulhesford]

High Quality Hosting

I have had hosting provided by http://www.clook.co.uk/ for over 5 years and I am really impressed with their reliability and helpful 24/7 service

I can honestly say that I cant remember any downtime in the time I have had hosting with them. I have found them that good I have set up a reseller account and now provide hosting to more than 30 sites and forums.

You can go direct with them from £50 per YEAR just follow this link http://www.clook.co.uk/

Or I can set it up for you, even uploading your site for you! Great for first timers.

I host this site for £45 per year http://www.powerbeckonline.co.uk and with 300 visitors a day it runs very well.

£45 per year hosting if set up by me
Disc Space 500 MB
Data transfer 10 GB
Email inboxes 50
Total websites 2
Clook Direct Hosting Monthly cost £5
Clook Direct Hosting Annual cost £50

[Darren B]

We switched to UKFast a couple of months ago.
Support is excellent.
And it really is lightening fast, even though we are on a shared server.
They have recently won lots of awards, but this could be down to a very active PR dept

im sure gabe has a dedicated server with these guys aswell

for low cost hosting then wiserhosting works well, i've had a site with them for years.

[Golf Tee Warehouse]

I have used Clook for the last 2 1/2 years for my site and can also recommend them. Support is very good and most queries answered and sorted within hours sometimes within minutes.
They also do not overload shared servers and a year or so back they stopped taking on new customers completely until the infrastructure was upgraded so that existing customers did not receive a poorer service when the number of customers increased.

I am on shared hosting and have had virtually no downtime until November when the server had several outages, although the problem seems to be fine again now.

[cbarling]

Obviously I am totally biased, but it's worth considering a few points in favour of Actinic Hosting:

- lowest prices start at £15 per month

- you get great quality. The servers are in the same datacentre as the x-factor web site, ITV and NHS servers

- there are hardware engineers on site 24x7

- the service is optimised for Actinic so you get a variety of performance benefits. This isn't just words, there's actual software installed on the server that isn't available on general hosts

- all software releases are tested on Actinic Hosting before release

- there's a one stop shop for support. No finger pointing if something doesn't work

- There are lot's of other aspects to the service to keep quality high. I won't list them all but for example there's UPS, backed up by on-site generators that automatically switch on with a contract in place to provide fuel at 6 hours notice so the fuel can't run out. I can sum up the service as fast, reliable hosting at a very decent price for what you get. There are very, very few cancellations

Obviously some of these points also apply to Actinic specialist hosts. Whatever you do, I would recommend using a host that specialises in Actinic.

Chris

[pinbrook]

Pinbrook

Since Chris is going for self promotion, so will I (I also note he has broken his own rule about not stating prices in this forum too)

Pinbrook has been hosting Actinic sites since 2000. Our starting price is less than Actinic.

We also use a high quality datacentre (not in Docklands) We also have big boys with some of their operations in the DC (Sainsbury,Tesco)

Actinic also use our servers to test software as part of their QA.

We get few cancellations too, but to be honest that is the nature of the game. Some people leave us to go to Actinic, some people have left Actinic and come to us.

We provide a network settings file for your initial upload.

We provide weekend and evening support.

We keep an eye on this forum and assist our customers where appropriate. (Although our support desk is the first place for hosting, email,domain support)

If you like all your eggs in one basket, go for A. If you like a bit of independence, consider us.

Hopefully this helps....

[leehack]

lol ding a ding a ling, round 3.