Hosting.co.uk review

First impression

Hosting.co.uk is one of Europe's top hosting companies that originally started business long ago in 2012 in Newark, United Kingdom. This adaptable, East Midlands headquartered, web hosting company has all of their data centers in the UK, as this is their main target market, and offers Shared Hosting, VPS Hosting, Dedicated Server Hosting, Website Design, and a Hacked Site Repair service, to their ever-increasing customer base globally.

Trial Period

Hosting.co.uk doesn't offer a trial, but they do offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on all Shared Hosting, Reseller Hosting, and VPS packages. If you don't like their service within the first 30 days of subscription, you can simply cancel your account for a full refund.

Keep in mind, however, that if your account has been cancelled and you still need your information from them, they charge a £20.00 per occurrence fee for any review of historical services. They usually keep the backups for 30 days after account cancellation.

Billing Cycle

Their Shared Hosting plans are available on a monthly, annual, or 3-year basis, whereas VPS Clients may subscribe on a monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly, or annual billing cycles with some very significant discounts available for longer term commitments.

Their payment methods accepted are all the popular Credit and Debit Cards, PayPal, Direct Debit (GBP and EUR payments only), iDeal, Klarna, Giropay, and over 50 Cryptocurrencies (the full list on their website).

Control Panel

Hosting.co.uk Shared Hosting plans employ the de facto standard cPanel Control Panel. The popular control panel offers a rock-solid, easy-to-use interface to manage websites and servers, employed by most hosting firms. For VPS, the option of cPanel, CentOS Web Panel, ISPConfig 3, or Plesk is available for Windows-based plans.

Limits

They offer customers four Shared Hosting plans to choose from, namely Beginner, Advanced, Business, and Pro. Beginner offers 10GB SSD disc space, 10 POP/IMAP mail accounts, 5 MySQL databases, and hosts 2 websites. The Advanced package offers 25GB SSD space, 20 POP/IMAP mail accounts, 10 MySQL databases, and hosts 5 individual domains. The Business offers 100GB SSD space, unlimited POP/IMAP emails and unlimited MySQL databases, with a limit of 10 websites, while the Pro package has no space, emails, databases, or websites to mention. This package also comes with a free dedicated IP address as standard, while this will cost you £20/year on the other packages.

They also provide four VPS packages. The VPS Standard contains 25GB SSD Space, 1 CPU Core, and 2GB RAM. The VPS Enhanced contains 125GB SSD storage, 4 CPU Cores, and 4GB RAM. The VPS Grow contains 350GB SSD space, 6 CPU Cores, and 12GB RAM, and the VPS Ultimate contains 500GB SSD Space, 8 CPU Cores, and 16GB RAM.

All VPS accounts come with an included free IP address and unlimited traffic by default.

Website Builder

Hosting.co.uk gives its customers their own award-winning and highly intuitive website builder, the appropriately named Easy Site Builder. The builder comes with ample pre-made and fully responsive themes that you can easily customize to your desired appearance and feel through a simple-to-use drag-and-drop interface. Developer Mode for more technically skilled individuals is also an option, with provisions for altering HTML and CSS. This builder is one you have to pay extra monthly for.

Security

Hosting.co.uk doesn't mess around when it comes to security. All plans, Shared and VPS, are protected by 1,000Gbps of DDOS protection from attacks on your website.

For Shared Hosting, BitNinja, a simple-to-use tool that secures your server, CMS, and website from cyber attacks, is one of a few other security features included. MagicSpam, a robust Anti-Spam tool, is installed on the control panel or mail server directly. SpamAssassin filters emails, and CSF (ConfigServer Firewall) offers extra server protection with a feature-rich interface to control the firewall. CSX, or "ConfigServer Exploit Scanner," scans files actively for viruses, malware, and exploits during upload. Furthermore, Mod_Security, an open-source web-based firewall (WAF) by Apache, is installed in their Shared Hosting packages using the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP).

They do, however, include a free SSL certificate through Let’s Encrypt in their Business & Pro plans, which I believe they could have easily done for their two lower plans as well.

VPS plans offer the root access, via which the desired security software can be installed. Free AutoSSL, an affordable alternative to paid SSL certificates, is also a common feature in VPS plans.

OS

Their Shared hosting plans are all CloudLinux-based, and their latest version is v7.9.0. But their VPS plans offer more options. They offer CentOS 7 & 8, Ubuntu 18.04 & 20.04, Debian 9 & 10, FreeBSD 13, CloudLinux 7 & 8, and AlmaLinux 8, which gives users a lot of choice.

Support

This company provides customer service from a highly experienced support team 24/7/365 by phone, ticketing, or live chat. I was very impressed with the support I received. On live chat, answers were nearly instantaneous, and by email, I always received a complete answer in 10 minutes regardless of the hour.

Conclusion

Hosting.co.uk has feature-rich plans with all the bells and whistles you'd expect from a solid provider and then some. They're highly security-conscious, which is a huge priority for me. They have great support, and their servers are fast with good uptime. They're definitely worth checking out if you're looking for a UK host.