New web host

After less than a year I’m waving bye bye to UK2.net and hello to 5quidhost. My domains will remain with UK2.net as 5quidhost doesn’t do domain hosting, but the actual web and email hosting will be done by this new company.

Early signs are impressive: the final straw with UK2.net (my package runs out early next month) was another email failure, at least the fourth of this year. This time, a whole day’s email will be lost, bounced back to the sender. I only knew of this because a friend emailed me on another domain that was working, and because I then checked the UK2.net service status page.

The new host has everything UK2.net offered – particularly unlimited MySQL databases, which are the backbone of the Support PCs site – plus a far better handling of email accounts. Now every domain has unlimited POP3 accounts instead of my having to set up a complicated forwarding system.

After reading a large number of good reviews about 5quidhosting, the final swaying factor was price: £5/month. I’ve only signed up for a single month so far too, so I’ve been able to test it without committing to a year’s hosting. Unless things dramatically get worse in the next few weeks I’ll be signing up for a year, which will cost me less than half the price I would have paid had I renewed with UK2.net.

The price is cheaper because of the limits on storage (2GB) and bandwidth (20GB/month). If I end up needing more, it’ll be because the web sites I run are generating more traffic, which in turn will hopefully bring in more revenue to help pay for the ongoing costs!