I’ve been hosting this site with Memset for some time. They’ve provided an excellent, quick and stable service throughout. With a change in emphasis towards providing servers rather than hosting, though, my recent time with them has not been without its strained relationship.

Some time ago my hosting package was done away with to new users and they continued to support existing customers. However, at each turn they’ve attempted to push me towards a virtual server option that I had no interest in. Bandwidth and disk space limitations have caused my costs to spiral yet Memset have put more pressure on me during support. For example, the other day I needed to housekeep some folders from the site that I couldn’t, for one reason or another, access. In the past they’ve been quite happy to do this for me – after all as I’m not in control of it I don’t always have the access I need. This time they warned me that in future they may charge me. Excuse me? They are hosting for me, I have no control over the PHP or Apache installation and the security restrictions. If these restrictions prevent me from removing some files, it’s hardly my problem.

Equally when I kept finding my MySQL database was done on repeated mornings, their solution was again to suggest that I move to a server package where I could control this.

The last straw was when I tried to downgrade my bandwidth requirements. Memset let you add on file size and bandwidth to your package for an additional monthly fee. After some recent caching issues my bandwidth went out of control so I bought some more to get me through one month. Now it’s under control I tried to downgrade to what I had. However, I was helpfully told that I couldn’t and had I thought about a Virtual Server package.

I’ve searched for new hosts in the past but not found any that truly stand out. I’ve tried moving a couple of times but pulled out after finding the new host didn’t offer all the features I wanted in the end. However, after a search yesterday I came across Tsohost. And it was astonishing – glowing reviews and superb value for money.

In the end I purchased their standard hosting package for £34.99 a year. I was paying £15 a month for Memset. This gives me more bandwidth and file space than I had at Memset and with better support – including a helpful customer forum (always useful for looking for problems before you sign up!). They appear knowledgeable and are regularly responding to issues on the forum (as well as writing up articles on how to resolve issues).

The transfer went ahead yesterday – I did it all manually and, yes, I cocked it up. After a stressful evening I got it working. The site is faster than it was at Memset (about 3 times quicker based on home page timings).

And I, for one, welcome our new hosting overlords. I for one expect this won’t be the last time they get a mention on the site – and hopefully always positive.

 Update 19th Jan:

Having some problems, but not the fault of tsohost. The move of my blog from one host to another appears to have unsettled one of the plugins that I’m using and it’s looping, constantly accessing this site and sending my bandwidth use through the roof. I disable the most likely candidates yesterday and that appears to have worked – now it’s a case of narrowing down the culprit. Thankfully (in a weird way) my personal blog is having the same issues so I can cross-check the plugins that I’ve disable here with those that I’m using on that one – it’s now down to 2.

While I was moving  something else happened – this site’s bandwidth limit was reached and the site went down. As you can imagine, I didn’t even notice.

My host is Memset who, I have to say, are superb. But you pay for that quality and I was already having to pay more than I was last year due to bandwidth increases (you pesky visitors keep coming here!). There’s only so much money you can throw at something though before you have to have a bit more of a radical re-think. So, I made the decision to move my hosting  to UK2 and one of their rather professional looking business packages. Bandwidth would no longer be an issue but, as is often the case with cheaper providers, the occasional downtime may be.

I pointed my domain (which is held at 1&1) to the UK2 servers and although my holding page was now appearing I couldn’t get FTP access. I raised a support request but didn’t hear anything until last night – it had taken some time for the IP changes to be propagated to their FTP server. This morning it was working so I uploaded the site but I was still getting the holding site. Another support request and they noticed that my site was pointing to the wrong IP. Now corrected, my site was live! Unfortunately I was getting server configuration errors – this was using an exact snapshot of the site as held by Memset.

Meantime, Memset had contacted me and I was in a position where I could double my bandwidth by paying just £1 extra a month.

By this time the decision was now easy. I have swapped my nameservers back to Memset and have cancelled my UK2 hosting – thankfully they have a 30 day money back guarantee.

Unfortunately, it comes with  a sting in its tail – they haven’t refunded me all my money. They have retained an administration fee for the free domain they provided me…

When you purchase the Business web hosting a free domain comes with it, because you are keeping the domain and cancelling the web hosting we have deducted the registration fee.

I’ve pointed out that they didn’t actually provide me with a new domain, I’d simply pointed my existing one to their nameservers at no cost to them. Eventually, they relented and paid me my full amount.

But, right now, I’m just happy to have the site working. Welcome back Memset!

Hosting Sites Reviews is a new site – it appears to have only been around for a matter of weeks – dedicated to, yes you guessed it, reviewing UK web hosting companies.

There is plenty of competition already in the market and because it is so new, there aren’t any reviews available – this is a new site trying to get a foot on the rung. The owner doesn’t intend to contribute but, instead, rely on customer submitted reviews. This is has in common with many of the alternatives. Personally, I think this is an opportunity wasted. With so many competing sites, you really need some kind of USP. Customer submitted reviews can sometimes be their own worst enemy with people complaining about issues that really weren’t the hosts problem, or giving them full scores simply because they hadn’t experienced any issues up until then. The big tech review sites ignore Web Host reviews as well, so this would be a great opportunity to have the reviews led by a single person doing a fair comparison between the alternatives.

Hosting Sites Reviews only has a handful of hosting companies on their list at the moment – this list, however, is consistent with many other sites so I wonder if it has anything to do with their affiliate schemes. If a site wants to show itself as fair and all-encompassing, it should really give the opportunity to everyone. I use Memset and (grumble, grumble) Streamline.net but neither are on the list (I’d love to write a review of the latter!).

But, this is a new site and I’m sure it will grow and improve over time. Already is show promise by dividing the companies into categories – green, php, asp hosting, etc. It even has it’s own Facebook page.

Website hosting is rarely taken as seriously as it should be so more and more sites dedicated to the reviewing of these companies can only be a good thing.