Editor's opinion
Sean Thompson
I am a full-time web developer & IT professional with more than 18 years experience. I have been working with numerous hosting companies over the years.
First impression
Webhosting UK was founded in 2001 by Robert King who was 18 years at the time, this born entrepreneur first started selling web hosting to people after buying a reseller package with his birthday money when he was only 13 years old and things just escalated from there. The company was initially named Hosting Heaven, and then rebranded as Webhosting UK (WHUK) in 2008, and currently forms part of the Hyperslice group alongside sister concern EUKhost.
This privately owned company has grown to become one of the largest web hosting providers in the UK. They serve over 35,000 customers and host in excess of 1,000,000 websites from their ISO 14001 & 50001 certified data centers. They currently offer Shared Hosting, WordPress Hosting, VPS Hosting, and Dedicated Server hosting on both Linux & Windows platforms.
Trial Period
All subscriptions to shared hosting plans and VPS plans carry a 30-day unconditional money-back guarantee. If you find the services to be deficient or unsatisfactory, you are entitled to a full refund of the base service cost (excluding software licenses, domain registration fees, domain transfer fees, and domain renewal fees) within the first 30 days of the date of your account set-up.
One should note that Dedicated Servers, Cloud Servers, Firewalls, and Backup Plans are not included under the 30-day money-back guarantee policy, and Webhosting UK reserves the right to decide if to issue pro-rata refunds under such circumstances.
Billing Cycle
Their hosting plans, whether it be Shared, Managed, or VPS, are offered with monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, and annual billing cycles, and as with most quality providers, one will get decent discounts should one commit to a longer payment cycle.
They accept payments via all major Credit/Debit cards, PayPal, and bank transfers.
Control Panel
Webhosting UK makes use of industry-leading control panels on all their plans. For Linux web hosting, they include the ever-popular cPanel, and for Windows web hosting, they have Plesk.
Limits
Webhosting UK offers 4 plans to choose from on their Shared Hosting namely, Starter, Premium, Advanced, and Developer. Storage space range from a generous 5GB on their entry-level plan up to 40GB on the top-tier plan, and all come standard with unlimited emails, bandwidth, and MySQL databases.
Their VPS hosting features multiple plans, each with slightly increased RAM, vCPU, and more space allocated than the previous one.
All their servers run on high-performance, low latency, enterprise-class NVMe SSD storage as standard.
Website Builder
Webhosting UK offers their clients an innovative drag-and-drop website Builder – simply called “Site Builder”, where beginners and professionals alike can all benefit from their website creation tools to design stylish, powerful, and easy-to-navigate websites resulting in a great user experience. There is a Wizard to guide you when you first use it, and it includes guided content to ensure easy understanding that helps accomplish tasks faster.
You can use the builder for free to build your website, but as soon as you publish your site you will be charged.
Security
The Webhosting UK data centers are all independently audited to ISO27001 standards and are protected from both physical and electronic intrusion at all times using some of the most sophisticated technologies available today. Their technical support team, which is available around the clock, will also gladly assist you with server hardening, CSF/PSA firewall, SSL setup and setting up custom firewall rules, intrusion prevention, Anti-DDoS, VPN, Anti-malware & application security to ensure your VPS is protected.
In partnership with Fortinet, they offer you the best in application-aware firewall technology with FortiGate. Featuring an Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and In-Flow Virus Protection, threats are detected and isolated before they can reach your server. These do however come at an extra cost and can be added to your server at an additional £104.99 GBP per month Ex. VAT.
They offer both paid and free SSL certificates. The free SSL certificates are by Let's Encrypt and need to be renewed every 90 days. Their technical support team will assist you with the installation and renewal upon request for free, Whereas the paid SSL certificates they offer are branded Global Sign SSL certificates that support strong 2048-bit encryption and warranty ranging from $1,000 US to $1,500,000 US, depending on the certificate you choose. These certificates can be renewed every 12 months.
OS
Their Shared Hosting is setup using the latest stable version of CentOS and Windows, whilst the VPS can be offered with CentOS 7.x, AlmaLinux 8.x, Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, Debian 11.x, CloudLinux Server 8.6, and Windows Server 2022.
Support
The support Webhosting UK provides is superb and comes in more ways than one. Technical assistance begins behind the scenes. As part of their managed hosting, their expert engineers look after the management of your server, keeping it performing at its best and patching and updating the operating system on your behalf.
As for technical support, it is available 24/7, 365 days a year, via Live Chat, Phone, Tickets, and Emails, so no matter what problems you might encounter, you’ll be able to get skilled assistance to quickly get matters resolved. What’s more, this is available via live chat support, making it easier than ever to get help when you need it. Response times are excellent too, on Live Chat their friendly support agents replied back within 30 seconds, and on email, I got a reply within 2 minutes of reaching out.
Conclusion
Pros |
Cons |
- Excellent Support4
- Free SSL certificates;
- Enterprise-class NVMe SSD storage as standard;
- 30-day unconditional money-back guarantee.
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- No free domains on monthly plans.
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Webhosting UK is a versatile web hosting solution, perfect for smaller or medium-sized businesses. The prices on their broad product range are affordable, the infrastructure excellent, great support and they offer a decent website builder – it is a bit surprising that they don’t have even more of the hosting market share in the UK! In my opinion, they should be on your shortlist should you be in the market for a quality hosting provider.