Hosting.co.uk Review
Hosting.co.uk is a UK hosting provider offering shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated servers, and domain registration and several website tools (cloud storage, email marketing, website builder, social media management, etc.) as complementary services to web hosting.
In this Hosting.co.uk review, we analyze the particularities of this UK web host, with special focus on the types of hosting plans, prices and features available.
Hosting.co.uk Overview
Hosting.co.uk was founded in 2012, and today it’s one of the biggest names in the UK web hosting landscape. Their network, datacenters, servers, and support staff are all based in the UK. Tier 4 Midlands data center serves UK and other European customers.
While Linux-based hosting is their primary offering, some dedicated servers are also available with Windows or Linux. If you’re targeting UK markets with your website, the range of plans offered by Hosting.co.uk will allow you to launch and grow your website.
Plans & Pricing
Each hosting type at Hosting.co.uk is represented through 4 hosting plans, with monthly prices being as low as £2/month.
Shared Hosting
All of the four hosting packages in this category are available on a yearly billing basis. Thus, the smaller hosting package, the Beginner, costs £24/year, that is, £2/month. The package includes 10 GB disk space, 100 GB data transfer, hosting for 2 websites, 5 MySQL databases and 10 email accounts.
The Advanced and Business plans, costing £48/year (£4 monthly) and £72/year (£6 monthly) respectively, pack more resources in terms of disk space (up to 100 GB) and data transfer (up to 1000 GB), hosting for multiple websites (up to 10), and unlimited MySQL databases and email accounts with the Business plan.
The Ultimate plan costs £96/year (£8/month) and it’s an unlimited plan when it comes to disk space, data transfer, hosted websites, email accounts, and MySQL databases. This plans also comes with a free dedicated IP address.
VPS Hosting
For the first month, all VPS hosting plans at Hosting.co.uk cost only £1. After the first month, the entry-level VPS plan, the VPS Standard, costs £9.95/month. This plan includes 20 GB disk space, 1 CPU core, 1024 MB RAM, and 2 IP addresses. Bandwidth is unlimited and you have three choices of Linux OS: Debian, Fedora, and CentOS.
The VPS Optimal and VPS Power plans cost £19.95/month and £29.95/month, respectively. The pack more RAM, more CPU, more disk space and more IP addresses.
The VPS Premium package costs £39.95/month and offers 50 GB disk space, 2 CPU cores, 4096 MB RAM, and 4 IP addresses.
Dedicated Servers
Hosting.co.uk’s dedicated servers come with Linux or Windows operating systems and full root admin access, including KVM remote access through IPMI. The entry-level plan features Intel 8 Core C2750, 8×2.4GHz CPU Core, 8GB DDR3 ECC RAM, 500GB SATA3 HDD Storage, 5,000 GB Bandwidth, and 2 IP Addresses. The plan is priced at £40/month.
The most powerful Hosting.co.uk dedicated server is priced at £299/month and has the following configuration: Intel Xeon E3-1270 v3, 4×3.5GHz CPU Core, 16GB DDR3 RAM, 2 x 1TB HDD Storage, UNMETERED GB Bandwidth, and 2 IP Addresses.
Reseller Hosting
Hosting.co.uk offers white label reseller hosting through 4 packages that range between £6.00/month and £24.00/month. You can get up to 200 GB disk space, 2000 GB data transfer, unlimited cPanel + accounts, a free dedicated IP.
Hosting Features
Beyond the configuration of plans detailed above, here are the hosting features included with Hosting.co.uk’s plans:
- 24x7x365 support;
- Carbon neutral hosting;
- 9& uptime guarantee;
- Tier IV UK datacenter;
- KVM remote access through IPMI (dedicated servers);
- Same day setup and 4 hour hardware replacement guarantee (dedicated servers);
- 1-click CMS installs (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, phpBB, PrestaShop, Zen Cart, OpenCart and 200 others);
- Choice of Linux distributions (Fedora, Debian and CentOS) and some dedicated hosting plans with options for Windows OS;
- Up to 4 IP addresses;
- Full root access;
- 30-day money-back guarantee;
- Full programming support (PHP, MySQL, Perl, HTML, CSS, HTML5, JavaScript, Python, Ruby on Rails and more);
- cPanel and WHM (free with some plans, available for extra fee with other plans!);
- Full serves management options (for extra fee!);
- Price freeze guarantee with some plans.
Customer Support
Hosting.co.uk’s Customer Support can be reached through live chat or by submitting a support ticket. While Hosting.co.uk used to offer phone support as well, it seems that they no longer offer this option for their customers.
A knowledge base is also available, but it’s populated with very few articles, so it’s unlikely that customers can use it to find genuine help to their issues.
Hosting.co.uk Pros & Cons
Hosting.co.uk is a full-featured hosting provider with several hosting packages to cover the website hosting needs of individuals, companies and eCommerce sites, but not necessarily suited for very large companies. Those looking to launch a UK-specific website, can enjoy the following benefits of Hosting.co.uk.
Pros
- 99.9% uptime guarantee;
- 30-day money-back guarantee;
- Upgradability;
- Plans with unlimited bandwidth and disk space;
- Price lock-in feature;
- 24/7 support.
As for the hits and misses of Hosting.co.uk:
Cons
- cPanel costs extra with VPS (£9/month) and dedicated servers (£26.00/month);
- Full management costs extra with dedicated servers (£35.00/month);
- No monthly billing available with shared hosting plans.
Although affordably priced, some of the add-on services offered by Hosting.co.uk are available only for an extra fee, which may raise the prices above packages offered by competitors.
Hosting.co.uk Review Conclusion
Hosting.co.uk is a hosting provider with a good selection of hosting plans with some great features like the price lock guarantee feature, which locks the price of your hosting package for the entire length of your account. This means that the price stays the same upon renewal and you’re protected from any price increases the company will implement in the future.
Although support options are not as abundant – knowledge base is rather slim and there is no phone support – the support options that are available are proving to be good at resolving queries and keeping Hosting.co.uk customers happy.
