Founded in 1999 by Octave Claba, OVHcloud is a French web hosting company with an international presence thanks to over 400,000 servers spread across more than 43 data centers in four continents. It offers a wide variety of cloud-based solutions to over 1.6 million seemingly satisfied customers. The company is headquartered in Roubaix (France), and its data centers can be found in the USA, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Germany, Poland, France, Singapore, and Australia. 

In December of 2010, OVHcloud was revealed to the public as a web hosting provider for WikiLeaks, making them a small part of the story that shook the world. In October of 2021, the company enhanced its public cloud portfolio with a Database as a Service (DBaaS) catalog of services with which its customers would be free of tedious tasks such as database configuration, the set-up, software, and hardware maintenance, and so forth.

• Interested in OVHcloud? Check out the website here

What types of hosting does OVHcloud offer?

As the largest provider in Europe today, OVHcloud offers a wide range of hosting products, from shared and VPS hosting to dedicated and even gaming-optimized servers for hosting. What’s more, it also offers both private and public cloud instances, bringing the benefits of cloud to small, medium, and enterprise customers.

Shared hosting

OVHcloud is one of the cheapest, if not the cheapest, provider when it comes to shared web hosting. Plans start at just $1.04 per month for the Starter Hosting tier which gets you 1 GB of disk space, free domain name for the first year, support for one website, free SSL certificate, anti-DDoS protection, and one-click WordPress installation. What's more, you also get access to OVHcloud’s Web Statistics tool for free, using which you can track page visits and engagement.

For support for more websites and CMS (Joomla!, Drupal, and Prestashop) as well as more storage and number of email accounts, consider upgrading to one of the three higher-end plans which range from $4.39/month to $13.19/month.

Interestingly, though, the shared hosting plans mentioned above do not come with CDN included; perhaps that's why they're among the cheapest plans in the industry. CDN, which reduces the loading time for your pages, will cost an extra $2.79 per month.

Dedicated server hosting

Unlike shared hosting where thousands of websites are hosted and stored on a single server, dedicated hosting allocates all the server disk space and resources to your website—no sharing resources with other websites. This results in better speeds and optimal performance.

With OVHcloud, you can spend anywhere between $50 and $4,000 on a dedicated server. The cheapest of the lot comes with the Intel Xeon E Processor, 32 GB RAM, and 1 TB SSD NVMe storage. This is an excellent package and right up there with the very best dedicated server hosting providers. 

A highlight of the service is its filtering system. You can select from a number of options under location, hardware (AMD vs Intel, core/threads, frequency, etc), price, and use cases to filter out the dedicated servers that fit your needs and budget. To put it simply, this is similar to what you get on shopping apps such as Amazon. Even better, the provider has dedicated servers for a wide variety of use cases, including Artificial Intelligence, gaming, grid computing, and so on.

However, I feel that it’s not as secure as it could be. InMotion, for example, comes packed with security features, including free SSL certificates, a custom firewall, DDoS protection, auto-updates, and heavily guarded data centers. To be fair, though, OVHcloud does come with SSL certificates and protection against DDoS attacks and DNS cache poisoning, so there’s a good amount of protection on offer.

VPS hosting

A virtual private server (VPS) divides a single physical server into multiple private server environments. Each of these “private” servers has dedicated resources (meaning better performance than what you’d get with shared hosting), but at the same time, the websites within the one large physical server are still essentially sharing resources, which keeps the cost down.

OVHcloud offers a ton of VPS server options, meaning choosing one is admittedly not as simple as, say, DreamHost or Liquid Web. At the same time, though, some users may like the availability of so many options. Where OVHcloud really sets itself apart is that all of its VPS servers are parts of its cloud environment, so you’ll benefit from auto-scaling, which will allow you to only pay for what you use. 

There are a total of eight plans to choose from, ranging from 1-16 CPU cores, 2-16 GB RAM, 20-160 GB SSD NVMe, and up to 2 Gbps unmetered bandwidth. This degree of customization allows you to choose the best plan for your unique requirements—plus, whether it’s a small business with a handful of websites or a large-scale application, there’s a plan for every use case. 

Cloud hosting

OVHcloud is hands down one of the best cloud hosting providers on the market right now. First things first, it offers two cloud products—public cloud instances and hosted private cloud. The latter is designed for large enterprises that want high-performance dedicated resources along with the benefits of the cloud. So, OVHcloud’s Public Cloud instances, which combine flexibility, guaranteed resources, and affordable prices, is where the party's at for most businesses and websites. 

OVHcloud is particularly great for niche businesses who want to be able to configure a cloud hosting plan to their liking. Where typical cloud hosts offer only a handful of plans, OVHcloud knocks it out of the park with 10+ broad filters, including storage, network, databases, data analytics, etc., all of which then have several subdivisions inside each of them, allowing you to zero in on the perfect plan for your business’s needs. 

For instance, if you want to run applications that require high-frequency computing, you can choose a plan from the ‘Compute Optimized’ section. Alternatively, if you dabble in data analysis and data science, a ‘Memory Optimized’ cloud hosting plan will be a perfect choice.

Also, if you want to steer clear of the extreme customization, OVHcloud allows you to do that too—just stick to the ‘General Purpose’ plans that provide balanced CPU/RAM resources. A highlight of OVHcloud is that no matter what plan you pick, you will get a generous $200 credit so that you can test OVHcloud’s services risk-free.

Coming to the costs, the most basic cloud hosting plan is $0.0508 per hour and gets you 8 GB of RAM, 2 vCores, and 50 GB fast NVMe storage. It’s worth noting that you can also opt for monthly billing, although that option is only available from the 7 GB RAM plan onwards. 

Is OVHcloud the cheapest cloud hosting? Nope. DreamHost at $0.0075 per hour and IONOS at $0.0056 per hour are much cheaper, meaning they are better suited for users who need the benefits of cloud i.e. auto-scaling and geo-redundancy, but don’t require the amount of power OVHcloud’s most basic plan offers.

However, OVHcloud comes with on-demand resources, meaning that your contact is non-binding—you can delete a resource at any time following which you won't be charged for it. Also, unlike other providers that may charge you for instance network traffic or API calls from Object Storage, OVHcloud offers these for free. 

Dedicated solutions for different industries

In addition to the above, where OVHcloud really stands tall is being a highly versatile and customizable hosting provider. Servers with DDoS protection and quick scaling for hosting large-scale video games? Check. Servers that facilitate remote learning and collaboration for the education industry? Check. Minecraft VPS servers—the kind you get with industry leaders such as Hostinger? Check.

Similarly, OVHcloud has a compliant and secure solution for just about every industry, whether that’s healthcare, IT, nonprofit, or the government sector. It also carries the proper attestations and certifications (HIPAA, HITECH, PCI DSS, etc) to be able to be this diverse. 

Plans and pricing

OVHcloud’s scope of cloud hosting solutions includes a public cloud, a private cloud, and a bare-metal cloud, under which you’ll find VPS, dedicated servers, managed bare metal hosting, as well as additional storage, backup, network, security, email, and big data solutions, domain name registration, and management services.  

The cloud solutions start relatively cheap with the “Personal” coming at $3.99 per month with an annual subscription. This plan can supply you with five websites, a free domain name for the first year, 100GB disk space (SSD), unlimited bandwidth, 10 email accounts (up to 1GB per account), one SQL database (up to 200 MB), support for Python (CGI), MySQL 5.6,  PHP (8.0 / 7.4 / 7.3), optimization for WordPress, anti-DDoS protection, and a Let's Encrypt SSL certificate. If you want more features and fewer restrictions on resources, you’ll have to purchase a bigger plan.

Unlike other hosts, OVHcloud doesn’t provide any free trials or money-back guarantees with its services, which means that if you decide to cancel their services, you can say goodbye to any money you’ve invested so far, including additional setup fees.

As for payment methods, with OVHcloud you can pay via credit/debit cards (Visa, MasterCard, and Maestro), PayPal, cheques, postal orders (in value of up to £250), and bank transfers.

Ease of use

OVHcloud’s official site uses a monochrome palette that plays with different shades of blue making itself quite easy on the eyes. It also utilizes a familiar page layout, provides plenty of information and features an up-to-date blog, all of which creates a user-friendly experience. The site is available in French, English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, and Dutch.

Fans of social networking sites can find OVHcloud on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube, where all accounts look very much alive.

After selecting a plan you want to use, you’ll be asked to pick out a pre-installed CMS from WordPress, PrestaShop, Drupal, Joomla, or to go without one. As for add-ons, you can include a CDN and extra SSL certificates (Let’s Encrypt SSL comes free of charge). After this, you can choose your domain name, where one is included for free for the first year with all OVHcloud’s plans.

If you have an account with OVHcloud, now is when you need to log in. If not, it’s time to create one, and doing so will need your full name, email address, and password. It’s also advisable to go through the “Terms of Service” before cracking on with any further steps. After this, you’ll have to pass a verification via email and surrender all the additional data (your telephone number, country, city, postcode, and language) to finish creating your account.

When all of this is done, you’ll gain access to OVHcloud’s dashboard, from which you can complete your purchase if you haven’t done so already. From here, you should be able to monitor and manage all aspects of your account, such as changing passwords, creating/restoring backups, creating/deleting databases, and so forth.

It’s worth noting that we didn’t use the word “should” because of a lack of belief in your abilities but due to the somewhat slow, painfully plain, and not too novice-friendly OVHcloud dashboard.

Unfortunately, even if you are willing to invest some cash into an intuitive industry-standard control panel, you can choose between cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin, and ISPconfig3 with only some of the many OVHcloud plans. For instance, industry-leading cPanel is only available with dedicated server hosting plans that start at $56.75 per month, and this isn’t something most users who look for simple solutions will be willing to pay.

How fast is OVHcloud?

An abundance of data centers scattered across the globe typically predicts lightning-fast speeds, and this is true with OVHcloud. A GTmetrix test performed on OVHcloud’s main site shows that it took 2.9 seconds for it to fully load, whereas the recommended time is less than 3.5 seconds (and the average is 8.1). On top of this, all other web vitals (speed measuring metrics) showed a presentable performance building-up to a near-perfect A (95%) as a final GTmetrix grade.  

As for uptime, OVHcloud offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee backed by SLA across most of its VPS ranges. Now, uptime is perhaps the only major area where the service falls slightly short of the competition. Sure, 99.9% backed by SLA is nothing to sniff at, but rivals such as InMotion Hosting offer a 99.999% uptime guarantee, whereas Liquid Web and DreamHost lead the space with a whopping 100% uptime guarantee.

OVHcloud also claims that all of its data centers are designed to Tier 3+ standards, meaning that the maximum amount of downtime a site should suffer throughout a year should be less than 1.6 hours in total (or 99.982% uptime). During a two-week-long uptime test on OVHcloud’s main site (via UptimeRobot), we only recorded a single case of downtime, but that lasted for 15 minutes straight. This amounted to 99.93% of uptime, which is a bit lower than we expected but still in line with the service’s uptime guarantee.

OVHcloud customer support

Although OVHcloud claims to be completely committed to its customers, this doesn’t seem to be the case with its customer support. There are four levels of support: Standard, Premium, Business, and Enterprise support. The lowest level called “Standard Support'' consists of several self-help options including a brief FAQ section, a knowledge base, and a community forum.

The knowledgebase contains plenty of step-by-step guides (some of which contain videos and others screenshots), which is fortunate since there’s barely anything to help and encourage beginners. On the other hand, the community forum seems quite active—although we did find several months-old questions that are still left unanswered.  

It’s worth noting that “Standard Support” is the only level of support that comes with every single hosting solution without any additional charges. “Premium Support” costs $56 per month, “Business Support” starts at $300 per month, and to find what fortune you’ll have to pay to get “Enterprise Support” you’ll have to request a callback from the sales team.

Anyway, you are free to contact OVHcloud’s sales team via telephone (on weekdays from 9 AM to 5 PM) and email/ticket. However, don’t expect to get anything but basic information here. OVHcloud also claims they’re planning to launch live chat support “soon” but they’ve been claiming that forever. The lack of live chat support (even one powered by a chatbot) is disappointing. So, if you have any questions regarding the service and you’d like to reach out to them, you’ll have to send them a message and then wait for a reply.

The competition

All those looking for a cloud-based solution can find an amazing alternative to OVHcloud in a US-based host called DigitalOcean. Both hosts are geared toward developers and tech-savvy users in general, to whom they offer a nice variety of web hosting products, and the similarities stop there. OVHcloud may be much cheaper than its competitor, but with DigitalOcean you’ll get better value for money and a bit better customer support.

Another popular alternative could be Linode, a US-based host with a data center network that parallels the one of OVHcloud. However, while Linode offers a 7-day trial to new users (and a 60-day credit), you won’t get anything similar with OVHcloud.

When it comes to user-friendliness, availability of customer support, and beginner-friendly features (such as free domain registration, industry-standard control panel, and money-back guarantee), HostGator wins the day. That being said, since HostGator has data centers in the USA only, it is less convenient to users elsewhere.

While OVHcloud stays outside the beginner’s comfort zone, Bluehost strives to boost the confidence of less experienced users by offering a full list of beginner-friendly features, round-the-clock support, a one-click installer with lots of apps, a drag-and-drop website builder, and a 30-day money-back guarantee. This means that you’ll have enough time to try everything out for yourself without a need to worry about your budget.    

Final verdict

With over two decades of experience, OVHcloud does a commendable job at supplying its customers with a variety of competitively priced cloud-based necessities, including VPS, dedicated servers, bare-metal servers, hosted private cloud, public cloud, as well as hybrid solutions. 

On the downside, though, OVHcloud isn’t as geared towards beginners as we would have liked, its customer support needs a serious revamp, and the lack of a refund period means that you can’t try out the service risk-free. If you think this could be a deal killer for you, check out more beginner-friendly hosts such as Hostinger and Bluehost before parting with your money.

• Here's a list of the best web hosting services on the market

Krystal Hosting began as the brainchild of a 17 year-old Simon Blackler. While spending his summer vacation developing a fan site for an upcoming video game and learning how to build it in that process, he faced the problem of finding a suitable web hosting service. After being annoyed with a number of overpriced hosting solutions with dreadful performance on the UK market, he came up with the idea of offering an “honest, reliable, and personal” alternative. 

Krystal Hosting was then founded in 2002 and has since become one of the largest independent web hosts in the UK which is currently hosting about 200,000 websites. Today, they offer a variety of hosting solutions, from standard shared hosting to managed WordPress, cloud VPS, and reseller hosting.

• Want to try Krystal Hosting? Check out the website here

As an ethical alternative to mainstream hosting providers at the time (a lot have become much better in terms for the environment). Krystal set out with a creed consisting of nine statements, which essentially cover the mission statement, "Currently the web hosting industry is dominated by two faceless corporations, who have gobbled up the competition to create a situation that is unfair to customers and harmful to the planet. But, we're here to show that there is a different way."

Krystal is headquartered in London (the UK) from where it maintains and manages its tier 1 data centers and over 220,000 websites for more than 30,000 customers. All of their data centers are 100% powered by green renewable energy, which means that their carbon footprint is reduced to a minimum and that our planet should be better with them around.

Krystal’s official site is refreshingly modern, well-organized, user-friendly, and pretty. The same is true about its official blog, which is chock full of articles written in an interesting, informative, and somewhat witty way.

As for social networking sites, Krystal can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Plans and pricing

Krystal offers a nice variety of web hosting solutions starting with simple shared hosting and application hosting (WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Opencart, PrestaShop, and Drupal), in addition to managed WordPress and advanced solutions such as reseller, VPS, and dedicated server hosting.

If a tight budget is one of your concerns, worry not. Although Krystal is not the most budget-friendly option on the market, it offers a few reasonably priced packages that come overloaded with features and with no limitations on bandwidth, databases, e-mails, subdomains, parked domains, and email aliases. All three shared hosting packages (Amethyst, Ruby, and Sapphire) also include free SSL certificates (via LetsEncrypt), one-click installers (Softaculous and Installatron), a user-friendly website builder (with no limitation on page/site numbers), an industry-leading cPanel, 24/7 support and 99.99% uptime guarantee.

All of Krystal’s hosting solutions come with a confident 60-day money-back guarantee, except for dedicated server plans (and understandably so), while with managed WordPress plans you can get a 30-day free trial.

Available payment methods with Krystal include credit/debit cards (Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, and American Express) and PayPal.

Ease of use

New users are prompted to create an account with Krystal, which requires a form to be filled out that includes  personal information, payment details, and a password.  

Accounts are set up in an instant, as they promised. We picked Onyx. Onyx is a fully managed plan, which means there is always someone from the technical team on the watch in case you get stuck or have any questions.

Krystal’s cloud-based shared hosting plans come with the industry-standard cPanel (which is always good news), a one-click installer with a myriad of available apps (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and many more), and a drag-and-drop builder. With all these tools you’ll be able to create a compelling site without writing a single line of code.

Speed and experience

We didn't test a website that we hosted on Krystal but we did the next best thing. We tested the Krystal website itself. Undoubtedly, this will be hosted on Krystal and quite important for them. If there's any issue on this site, not much can be said for what you host on them. As for uptime, Krystal guarantees 99.99% at all times. After getting UptimeRobot to monitor their main site for two weeks without a break, we got a glimpse of what you can expect to get while hosting with Krystal, and that is exactly what they promised. During our test, not a single second of downtime was recorded whatsoever and no major oscillations in response time to boot, which paints a picture of pretty presentable performance.

Support

Seeking support on Krystal’s main site will give you a few options including opening a support ticket, starting a live chat, giving them a ring (if you are their client), or searching through the knowledgebase. The ticketing system is available round-the-clock but you can expect to get a reply every day from 6 AM till midnight. The same hours apply for the live chat, while telephone support can be reached Monday to Friday from 9 AM to 8 PM. However, if you’ve opted for one of their premium packages, emergency phone support will be available for you 24/7.

We tried the live support and the responses were lazy. We asked if they have 24/7 support to see how much effort they would put into their reply. Their answer, after a short wait, was, "You can obtain support via live chat (9am to 6:00pm), support ticket (24/7 submission - manned 6am - midnight) or phone (Monday - Friday 9am - 8pm and 24/7 emergency phone support)."

We found this a little misleading as we thought 24/7 emergency support is only covered in the more expensive plans.

So, we asked if this support is available for all plans. A Krystal employee responded, "That would be on the business packages only, as mentioned at  https://help.krystal.uk/getting-started/what-support-is-included-with-my-hosting."

This still didn't really answer our question as there was no indication as to what "business packages" are (there are no plans labelled as business plans). The page also didn't explain whether 24/7 emergency support is available for VPS plans and on the VPS pages it wasn't immediately clear either.

After some digging we worked out that 24/7 emergency support is also available for all VPS plans but only with a management add-on that costs an extra £80/mo.

We also found that chat history is not handed over between shifts for chat support. This meant that we had to explain our query again only ten minutes after we first opened the chat. 

Overall, we were underwhelmed by the support received and the help pages for what should have been a rather simple query. 

Krystal provides a knowledgebase on the official site to help you find the best self-help option. It compiles over 300 easy-to-follow how-tos divided into 18 interconnected categories. At the end of each article, users are welcomed to leave a grade with a fitting emoji (charmed, confused, or a disappointed). As for our impression, we were pretty much charmed with everything we saw there.

The competition

If you are looking for an eco-friendly host with a similar scope of cloud-based products as Krystal’s, but with data centers across four continents, SiteGround might be a good pick. The hosts are remarkably similar in terms of pricing and features, however, SiteGround has the edge with its worldwide infrastructure.

Like Krystal, GreenGeeks is a likable beginner-friendly host that cares about the environment. However, since it offers data center locations in the USA and Canada (in addition to Europe), it may be more attractive to the wider audience.

Bluehost is another budget-friendly albeit US-based alternative to all the above, yet its US-based data centers don’t offer much flexibility in terms of location (unlike with SiteGround and GreenGeeks). Additionally, after a few years of hosting with Bluehost, the price of your package will dramatically increase, which may catch you unaware. There will be no such surprises with Krystal.

Much like Bluehost, HostGator is a US-based host offering a myriad of hosting options, features, and free apps for an attractive price. Unfortunately, just like Bluehost, it provides data centers in the USA only. Nevertheless, since all of these web hosting providers offer a money-back guarantee (Krystal’s is valid for 60 days), you can check them all out without the need to worry about wasting your money.

Final verdict

Krystal’s superiority in the UK market comes from its commitment to speed, stability, and sustainability. They also have a good reputation across multiple review sites and really nice business practices. For example, they offer free hosting to UK charities and start-ups in their first year.

• We've also highlighted the best web hosting

The company with the curious name of 20i was launched in 2016 by a dynamic duo consisting of two brothers, Tim and Jonathan Brealey. Although 20i is still basically a new-born in the trade, its creators are industry veterans, having gathered extensive web hosting experience while working on their previous creations.

Their first project was Webfusion, which was the first company to offer a customized version of a control panel called Virtual Control Panel. Three years later they founded 123-Reg, which remains a market leader in domain name registration in the UK. After two decades of experience the brother's launched a hosting company that would (in their words) “break the mold” (let’s hope for the better).

20i’s head office is located in Ransom Wood, the UK, and they have two of their own datacenters, one in London and one in Dallas, Texas. Plus they have the option of using AWS and Google Cloud servers. 20i also provide a global CDN (content delivery network) with twenty-one locations across Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa, but their infographics could lead you to believe there are more locations included in their network than there are. So, double check the CDN locations when making a purchasing decision.

Actual amount and location of CDN nodes

Plans and pricing

20i are best known for their reseller hosting but they also provide managed cloud hosting for AWS, and managed WordPress hosting and WooCommerce hosting from their own datacenters and AWS and Google Cloud servers. For reseller plans you can't choose the datacenter location but for other plans you can. 

If you create a reseller account with US login details you'll automatically be given servers in the US datacenter. If you create a reseller account with UK login details, you'll get the UK datacenter. For other plans you can choose the location but only customers from outside the UK have the option to use the USD listing price which is cheaper than the GBP listing price after currency conversion. If you use a VPN you might be able to take advantage of the USD prices (but check the T&Cs).

We asked 20i about why the pricing is different and we were told that it's because of the lower costs to run a datacenter in the US. This didn't add up though because for this plan you can choose a server location anywhere in the world. 

Even though 20i focuses on reseller hosting, its shared, WordPress and VPS packages offer a wide array of fantastic features such as free website migration, CDN, website acceleration suite and much more. All hosting plans are presented in a very detailed manner where you can  get all needed information about web hosting packages, their cloud platform, security measures, e-mail features, supported web hosting software and their promises (some of which are backed by a guarantee) within a few clicks.

We've noticed at least one inaccuracy in the specifications listed for 20i plans. For example, for managed WordPress hosting unlimited MySQL databases with a 5GB capacity are provided but in the small print it says that database size is limited to 1024 megabytes. We asked 20i about the database capacity and were told that the limit is actually based on the SSD size of the hosting plan.

After you select a plan, you’ll be provided with a few options regarding the domain name. Here, in addition to the typical options (register a new or use an old one), you can choose to feed the little master of procrastination that lives in all of us and decide to, well, decide later what to do about your domain.

In any case, the rest of the process is everything one might expect from it. You are required to provide a first round of personal data, opt for a payment frequency (monthly or annual, with the annual one getting you one month of free hosting) and go through 20i’s terms and conditions. Now it’s time for the second round of personal data and the content of a form slightly differs depending on whether you are acting as an individual or on behalf of a company.

Ease of use

20i have their own control panel (named simply My20i) that, without much subtlety, proclaims its superiority over the fan-favorite “old-school” Linux-based cPanel. Funnily enough, My20i and cPanel look like chips off the same old block, which is something even the casual eye would take a notice of.

However, we have to admit, My20i is one of the most user-friendly tailor-made control panels we have seen and the one that will make everything you need readily available at your fingertips. It is a genuine one-stop solution for managing all of your web hosting, e-mails, databases and software. In addition to this, it has to be noted that My20i is included with all hosting packages, so you won’t be driven to pay extra just to enjoy its elegant simplicity and intuitive ease of use.

As an alternative (not that you will need one), you can use 20i’s drag-and-drop website builder,  but if you haven’t opted for their “Startup”, “Premium”, “Business” or any of the reseller plans, it will come at a price.

Speed and experience

Considering that 20i utilizes worldwide CDN and their own website acceleration suite in order to improve your site speed and “make it fly”, we came with a certain set of expectations regarding the speed performance. After we performed a speed test on 20i’s main website (provided by GTmetrix), our expectations were pretty much justified.

The page fully loaded in just 1.8 seconds (the average result is 8.1) and it required 55 requests to do so (the average being 98 requests). In addition, all other vital web metrics were ahead of the curve i.e. all but one, and that is total blocking time that regrettably took 352 milliseconds, although ideally it should be less than 150. Nevertheless, GTmetrix rated the speed performance of 20i’s site with a B (86%), which is one of the better performances we have seen so far.

20i emphasizes security of their “state-of-the-art” data centers that are manned day-and-night and reinforced with high-level physical security measures that cover everything from backup power generators to advanced fire protection. However, oddly enough, they failed to say a lot about the uptime we can expect while doing business with them.

As per usual, we put the uptime of 20i’s main website to the test, so you don’t have to. After a month of steadfast monitoring (via tireless UptimeRobot), our efforts were rewarded by pretty promising results. There was no recorded downtime at all resulting in an impeccable 100% of uptime. 

Support

Although all visitors to 20i’s website have an option to reach its support staff via telephone, if you are looking for some good old customer support, you will notice that their help is primarily text-based. The first pick for most of us will be live chat, which seems available during the working hours at a minimum. Fortunately (for both parties), after testing the willingness of their helping hands, we were well pleased with all the hand-holding we got. 

If you’re not in a rush, you can get in touch with 20i’s technical team via support ticket or email. However, if you want to remain as self-sufficient as humanly possible, there are some excellent options for you as well. The principal one is their knowledgebase (titled “Support Database”) as it manages to cover all key issues and concerns in an easy-to-understand way. On the other hand, if you are more into how-to video guides, 20i’s YouTube channel features a stack of them (actually, around sixty) and those we have checked out seem really handy. 

The competition

Most newcomers looking for a well-balanced reseller hosting solution are likely to consider web hosting providers like InMotion Hosting, HostGator and A2 Hosting at some point, and not without reason.

Since you are here, you are presumably taking 20i into consideration. And if you pick them out, you are right to expect a full list of features (many of which are unlimited), lightning speed and powerful performance in general, together with a standard 30-day money-back guarantee. However, if this should be your first close encounter with reseller web hosting, InMotion Hosting is most likely your safest bet. Their packages present a great value for money at a pocket-friendly price of $26.59 (with 20i it is about $49.50) per month, with cPanel, WHM and WHMCS  included together with an overgenerous 90-day money-back guarantee that will give you quite a bit of time to try them out before making any definitive decision.

Although HostGator is not as reseller-focused as 20i, its reseller plans can grab anyone’s attention, particularly in terms of features. For a really reasonable price HostGator will put no limitations on the number of domains, subdomains, email accounts, MySQL databases and FTP accounts. However, if you want an unlimited hosting in its true form, you’ll have to go with 20i for they will throw in an unlimited number of websites, unlimited storage space (100% SSD), unlimited bandwidth and unlimited Wildcard SSL certificates.

Bluehost is another popular alternative for those on the lookout for a novice-friendly hosting provider that has something to meet most needs. However, while Bluehost offers no reseller packages (which are 20i’s specialty), 20i doesn’t provide an option for demanding users in need of dedicated servers (and Bluehost does). This is one of those differences that can serve as a decisive point for certain types of users.

In terms of features, GreenGeeks is comparable with InMotion Hosting, but one feature that sets them apart from all the hosts above is (not hard to guess considering the name of the company is highly suggestive) their dedication to eco-friendly hosting. If we add that they guarantee 99.98% of uptime, provide 24/7 live support chat and all at a price starting at $10.95 (you can get about 80% off on sale), going green might sound even better.   

Final verdict

One of the hallmarks of hosting with 20i is their very own custom-made My20i control panel and it is the closest thing to an industry-standard control panel (such as cPanel and Plesk) we have seen since the Jurassic period of web hosting. Its beauty lies in its simplicity, intuitive design and sheer user-friendliness, which is something we seldom see with non-standard counterparts.

At the same time, 20i has been quietly gaining worldwide momentum thanks to its well-structured, feature-rich and easy-to-set up hosting solutions, a performance one can rely on and professional and polite in-house support staff.

We just found too many inaccuracies on their site which could fall into being misleading for us to strongly recommend this hosting provider for everyone. If you're looking for the best UK web hosting, there are other options.

Claimed score vs real score

The company with the curious name of 20i was launched in 2016 by a dynamic duo consisting of two brothers, Tim and Jonathan Brealey. Although 20i is still basically a new-born in the trade, its creators are industry veterans, having gathered extensive web hosting experience while working on their previous creations.

Their first project was Webfusion, which was the first company to offer a customized version of a control panel called Virtual Control Panel. Three years later they founded 123-Reg, which remains a market leader in domain name registration in the UK. After two decades of experience the brother's launched a hosting company that would (in their words) “break the mold” (let’s hope for the better).

20i’s head office is located in Ransom Wood, the UK, and they have two of their own datacenters, one in London and one in Dallas, Texas. Plus they have the option of using AWS and Google Cloud servers. 20i also provide a global CDN (content delivery network) with twenty-one locations across Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa, but their infographics could lead you to believe there are more locations included in their network than there are. So, double check the CDN locations when making a purchasing decision.

Actual amount and location of CDN nodes

Plans and pricing

20i are best known for their reseller hosting but they also provide managed cloud hosting for AWS, and managed WordPress hosting and WooCommerce hosting from their own datacenters and AWS and Google Cloud servers. For reseller plans you can't choose the datacenter location but for other plans you can. 

If you create a reseller account with US login details you'll automatically be given servers in the US datacenter. If you create a reseller account with UK login details, you'll get the UK datacenter. For other plans you can choose the location but only customers from outside the UK have the option to use the USD listing price which is cheaper than the GBP listing price after currency conversion. If you use a VPN you might be able to take advantage of the USD prices (but check the T&Cs).

We asked 20i about why the pricing is different and we were told that it's because of the lower costs to run a datacenter in the US. This didn't add up though because for this plan you can choose a server location anywhere in the world. 

Even though 20i focuses on reseller hosting, its shared, WordPress and VPS packages offer a wide array of fantastic features such as free website migration, CDN, website acceleration suite and much more. All hosting plans are presented in a very detailed manner where you can  get all needed information about web hosting packages, their cloud platform, security measures, e-mail features, supported web hosting software and their promises (some of which are backed by a guarantee) within a few clicks.

We've noticed at least one inaccuracy in the specifications listed for 20i plans. For example, for managed WordPress hosting unlimited MySQL databases with a 5GB capacity are provided but in the small print it says that database size is limited to 1024 megabytes. We asked 20i about the database capacity and were told that the limit is actually based on the SSD size of the hosting plan.

After you select a plan, you’ll be provided with a few options regarding the domain name. Here, in addition to the typical options (register a new or use an old one), you can choose to feed the little master of procrastination that lives in all of us and decide to, well, decide later what to do about your domain.

In any case, the rest of the process is everything one might expect from it. You are required to provide a first round of personal data, opt for a payment frequency (monthly or annual, with the annual one getting you one month of free hosting) and go through 20i’s terms and conditions. Now it’s time for the second round of personal data and the content of a form slightly differs depending on whether you are acting as an individual or on behalf of a company.

Ease of use

20i have their own control panel (named simply My20i) that, without much subtlety, proclaims its superiority over the fan-favorite “old-school” Linux-based cPanel. Funnily enough, My20i and cPanel look like chips off the same old block, which is something even the casual eye would take a notice of.

However, we have to admit, My20i is one of the most user-friendly tailor-made control panels we have seen and the one that will make everything you need readily available at your fingertips. It is a genuine one-stop solution for managing all of your web hosting, e-mails, databases and software. In addition to this, it has to be noted that My20i is included with all hosting packages, so you won’t be driven to pay extra just to enjoy its elegant simplicity and intuitive ease of use.

As an alternative (not that you will need one), you can use 20i’s drag-and-drop website builder,  but if you haven’t opted for their “Startup”, “Premium”, “Business” or any of the reseller plans, it will come at a price.

Speed and experience

Considering that 20i utilizes worldwide CDN and their own website acceleration suite in order to improve your site speed and “make it fly”, we came with a certain set of expectations regarding the speed performance. After we performed a speed test on 20i’s main website (provided by GTmetrix), our expectations were pretty much justified.

The page fully loaded in just 1.8 seconds (the average result is 8.1) and it required 55 requests to do so (the average being 98 requests). In addition, all other vital web metrics were ahead of the curve i.e. all but one, and that is total blocking time that regrettably took 352 milliseconds, although ideally it should be less than 150. Nevertheless, GTmetrix rated the speed performance of 20i’s site with a B (86%), which is one of the better performances we have seen so far.

20i emphasizes security of their “state-of-the-art” data centers that are manned day-and-night and reinforced with high-level physical security measures that cover everything from backup power generators to advanced fire protection. However, oddly enough, they failed to say a lot about the uptime we can expect while doing business with them.

As per usual, we put the uptime of 20i’s main website to the test, so you don’t have to. After a month of steadfast monitoring (via tireless UptimeRobot), our efforts were rewarded by pretty promising results. There was no recorded downtime at all resulting in an impeccable 100% of uptime. 

Support

Although all visitors to 20i’s website have an option to reach its support staff via telephone, if you are looking for some good old customer support, you will notice that their help is primarily text-based. The first pick for most of us will be live chat, which seems available during the working hours at a minimum. Fortunately (for both parties), after testing the willingness of their helping hands, we were well pleased with all the hand-holding we got. 

If you’re not in a rush, you can get in touch with 20i’s technical team via support ticket or email. However, if you want to remain as self-sufficient as humanly possible, there are some excellent options for you as well. The principal one is their knowledgebase (titled “Support Database”) as it manages to cover all key issues and concerns in an easy-to-understand way. On the other hand, if you are more into how-to video guides, 20i’s YouTube channel features a stack of them (actually, around sixty) and those we have checked out seem really handy. 

The competition

Most newcomers looking for a well-balanced reseller hosting solution are likely to consider web hosting providers like InMotion Hosting, HostGator and A2 Hosting at some point, and not without reason.

Since you are here, you are presumably taking 20i into consideration. And if you pick them out, you are right to expect a full list of features (many of which are unlimited), lightning speed and powerful performance in general, together with a standard 30-day money-back guarantee. However, if this should be your first close encounter with reseller web hosting, InMotion Hosting is most likely your safest bet. Their packages present a great value for money at a pocket-friendly price of $26.59 (with 20i it is about $49.50) per month, with cPanel, WHM and WHMCS  included together with an overgenerous 90-day money-back guarantee that will give you quite a bit of time to try them out before making any definitive decision.

Although HostGator is not as reseller-focused as 20i, its reseller plans can grab anyone’s attention, particularly in terms of features. For a really reasonable price HostGator will put no limitations on the number of domains, subdomains, email accounts, MySQL databases and FTP accounts. However, if you want an unlimited hosting in its true form, you’ll have to go with 20i for they will throw in an unlimited number of websites, unlimited storage space (100% SSD), unlimited bandwidth and unlimited Wildcard SSL certificates.

Bluehost is another popular alternative for those on the lookout for a novice-friendly hosting provider that has something to meet most needs. However, while Bluehost offers no reseller packages (which are 20i’s specialty), 20i doesn’t provide an option for demanding users in need of dedicated servers (and Bluehost does). This is one of those differences that can serve as a decisive point for certain types of users.

In terms of features, GreenGeeks is comparable with InMotion Hosting, but one feature that sets them apart from all the hosts above is (not hard to guess considering the name of the company is highly suggestive) their dedication to eco-friendly hosting. If we add that they guarantee 99.98% of uptime, provide 24/7 live support chat and all at a price starting at $10.95 (you can get about 80% off on sale), going green might sound even better.   

Final verdict

One of the hallmarks of hosting with 20i is their very own custom-made My20i control panel and it is the closest thing to an industry-standard control panel (such as cPanel and Plesk) we have seen since the Jurassic period of web hosting. Its beauty lies in its simplicity, intuitive design and sheer user-friendliness, which is something we seldom see with non-standard counterparts.

At the same time, 20i has been quietly gaining worldwide momentum thanks to its well-structured, feature-rich and easy-to-set up hosting solutions, a performance one can rely on and professional and polite in-house support staff.

We just found too many inaccuracies on their site which could fall into being misleading for us to strongly recommend this hosting provider for everyone. If you're looking for the best UK web hosting, there are other options.

Claimed score vs real score

The company with the curious name of 20i was launched in 2016 by a dynamic duo consisting of two brothers, Tim and Jonathan Brealey. Although 20i is still basically a new-born in the trade, its creators are industry veterans, having gathered extensive web hosting experience while working on their previous creations.

Their first project was Webfusion, which was the first company to offer a customized version of a control panel called Virtual Control Panel. Three years later they founded 123-Reg, which remains a market leader in domain name registration in the UK. After two decades of experience the brother's launched a hosting company that would (in their words) “break the mold” (let’s hope for the better).

20i’s head office is located in Ransom Wood, the UK, and they have two of their own datacenters, one in London and one in Dallas, Texas. Plus they have the option of using AWS and Google Cloud servers. 20i also provide a global CDN (content delivery network) with twenty-one locations across Europe, North and South America, Asia and Africa, but their infographics could lead you to believe there are more locations included in their network than there are. So, double check the CDN locations when making a purchasing decision.

Actual amount and location of CDN nodes

Plans and pricing

20i are best known for their reseller hosting but they also provide managed cloud hosting for AWS, and managed WordPress hosting and WooCommerce hosting from their own datacenters and AWS and Google Cloud servers. For reseller plans you can't choose the datacenter location but for other plans you can. 

If you create a reseller account with US login details you'll automatically be given servers in the US datacenter. If you create a reseller account with UK login details, you'll get the UK datacenter. For other plans you can choose the location but only customers from outside the UK have the option to use the USD listing price which is cheaper than the GBP listing price after currency conversion. If you use a VPN you might be able to take advantage of the USD prices (but check the T&Cs).

We asked 20i about why the pricing is different and we were told that it's because of the lower costs to run a datacenter in the US. This didn't add up though because for this plan you can choose a server location anywhere in the world. 

Even though 20i focuses on reseller hosting, its shared, WordPress and VPS packages offer a wide array of fantastic features such as free website migration, CDN, website acceleration suite and much more. All hosting plans are presented in a very detailed manner where you can  get all needed information about web hosting packages, their cloud platform, security measures, e-mail features, supported web hosting software and their promises (some of which are backed by a guarantee) within a few clicks.

We've noticed at least one inaccuracy in the specifications listed for 20i plans. For example, for managed WordPress hosting unlimited MySQL databases with a 5GB capacity are provided but in the small print it says that database size is limited to 1024 megabytes. We asked 20i about the database capacity and were told that the limit is actually based on the SSD size of the hosting plan.

After you select a plan, you’ll be provided with a few options regarding the domain name. Here, in addition to the typical options (register a new or use an old one), you can choose to feed the little master of procrastination that lives in all of us and decide to, well, decide later what to do about your domain.

In any case, the rest of the process is everything one might expect from it. You are required to provide a first round of personal data, opt for a payment frequency (monthly or annual, with the annual one getting you one month of free hosting) and go through 20i’s terms and conditions. Now it’s time for the second round of personal data and the content of a form slightly differs depending on whether you are acting as an individual or on behalf of a company.

Ease of use

20i have their own control panel (named simply My20i) that, without much subtlety, proclaims its superiority over the fan-favorite “old-school” Linux-based cPanel. Funnily enough, My20i and cPanel look like chips off the same old block, which is something even the casual eye would take a notice of.

However, we have to admit, My20i is one of the most user-friendly tailor-made control panels we have seen and the one that will make everything you need readily available at your fingertips. It is a genuine one-stop solution for managing all of your web hosting, e-mails, databases and software. In addition to this, it has to be noted that My20i is included with all hosting packages, so you won’t be driven to pay extra just to enjoy its elegant simplicity and intuitive ease of use.

As an alternative (not that you will need one), you can use 20i’s drag-and-drop website builder,  but if you haven’t opted for their “Startup”, “Premium”, “Business” or any of the reseller plans, it will come at a price.

Speed and experience

Considering that 20i utilizes worldwide CDN and their own website acceleration suite in order to improve your site speed and “make it fly”, we came with a certain set of expectations regarding the speed performance. After we performed a speed test on 20i’s main website (provided by GTmetrix), our expectations were pretty much justified.

The page fully loaded in just 1.8 seconds (the average result is 8.1) and it required 55 requests to do so (the average being 98 requests). In addition, all other vital web metrics were ahead of the curve i.e. all but one, and that is total blocking time that regrettably took 352 milliseconds, although ideally it should be less than 150. Nevertheless, GTmetrix rated the speed performance of 20i’s site with a B (86%), which is one of the better performances we have seen so far.

20i emphasizes security of their “state-of-the-art” data centers that are manned day-and-night and reinforced with high-level physical security measures that cover everything from backup power generators to advanced fire protection. However, oddly enough, they failed to say a lot about the uptime we can expect while doing business with them.

As per usual, we put the uptime of 20i’s main website to the test, so you don’t have to. After a month of steadfast monitoring (via tireless UptimeRobot), our efforts were rewarded by pretty promising results. There was no recorded downtime at all resulting in an impeccable 100% of uptime. 

Support

Although all visitors to 20i’s website have an option to reach its support staff via telephone, if you are looking for some good old customer support, you will notice that their help is primarily text-based. The first pick for most of us will be live chat, which seems available during the working hours at a minimum. Fortunately (for both parties), after testing the willingness of their helping hands, we were well pleased with all the hand-holding we got. 

If you’re not in a rush, you can get in touch with 20i’s technical team via support ticket or email. However, if you want to remain as self-sufficient as humanly possible, there are some excellent options for you as well. The principal one is their knowledgebase (titled “Support Database”) as it manages to cover all key issues and concerns in an easy-to-understand way. On the other hand, if you are more into how-to video guides, 20i’s YouTube channel features a stack of them (actually, around sixty) and those we have checked out seem really handy. 

The competition

Most newcomers looking for a well-balanced reseller hosting solution are likely to consider web hosting providers like InMotion Hosting, HostGator and A2 Hosting at some point, and not without reason.

Since you are here, you are presumably taking 20i into consideration. And if you pick them out, you are right to expect a full list of features (many of which are unlimited), lightning speed and powerful performance in general, together with a standard 30-day money-back guarantee. However, if this should be your first close encounter with reseller web hosting, InMotion Hosting is most likely your safest bet. Their packages present a great value for money with cPanel, WHM and WHMCS  included together with an overgenerous 90-day money-back guarantee that will give you quite a bit of time to try them out before making any definitive decision.

Although HostGator is not as reseller-focused as 20i, its reseller plans can grab anyone’s attention, particularly in terms of features. For a really reasonable price HostGator will put no limitations on the number of domains, subdomains, email accounts, MySQL databases and FTP accounts. However, if you want an unlimited hosting in its true form, you’ll have to go with 20i for they will throw in an unlimited number of websites, unlimited storage space (100% SSD), unlimited bandwidth and unlimited Wildcard SSL certificates.

Bluehost is another popular alternative for those on the lookout for a novice-friendly hosting provider that has something to meet most needs. However, while Bluehost offers no reseller packages (which are 20i’s specialty), 20i doesn’t provide an option for demanding users in need of dedicated servers (and Bluehost does). This is one of those differences that can serve as a decisive point for certain types of users.

In terms of features, GreenGeeks is comparable with InMotion Hosting, but one feature that sets them apart from all the hosts above is (not hard to guess considering the name of the company is highly suggestive) their dedication to eco-friendly hosting. If we add that they guarantee 99.98% of uptime, provide 24/7 live chat support going green might sound even better.   

Final verdict

One of the hallmarks of hosting with 20i is their very own custom-made My20i control panel and it is the closest thing to an industry-standard control panel (such as cPanel and Plesk) we have seen since the Jurassic period of web hosting. Its beauty lies in its simplicity, intuitive design and sheer user-friendliness, which is something we seldom see with non-standard counterparts.

At the same time, 20i has been quietly gaining worldwide momentum thanks to its well-structured, feature-rich and easy-to-set up hosting solutions, a performance one can rely on and professional and polite in-house support staff.

We just found too many inaccuracies on their site which could fall into being misleading for us to strongly recommend this hosting provider for everyone. If you're looking for the best UK web hosting, there are other options.

Claimed score vs real score

When it comes to best web hosting and website management, there is no shortage of options. The vast majority of companies out there offer affordable services that are good enough to get the job done. For us, Kinsta is the stand-out choice for hosting for agencies.

Kinsta is a cloud-based hosting solution providing services for WordPress websites, web applications, databases, and static sites. They provide access to high-performance servers and features such as staging environments, automatic backups, enterprise-level Cloudflare integration, and more.

Kinsta also includes quality security features such as DDoS protection, SSL certificate with wildcard support, and malware scanning and removal.

• Want to try Kinsta? Check out the website here

From the main website, you can access Kinsta’s official blog. It’s easy on the eye and filled with a myriad of articles, most of which are related to WordPress and software development. In addition to this, Kinsta offers a fresh and video-packed YouTube channel and relatively active presence on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

Kinsta features

Kinsta offers high-end CPUs, as well as global availability thanks to Google’s C2 and C3D machines on its premium tier network. By using these top-of-the-line CPUs, you are guaranteed that your website will be up and running faster than ever before.

To further improve the speed of your website, Kinsta also offers a global content delivery network with over 260 locations around the world. This allows Kinsta to deliver fast pages and serve cached assets from your visitors’ closest location.

Kinsta also comes with built-in application performance monitoring (APM), which is its custom-designed performance monitoring tool specifically for WordPress sites. We used this feature to identify any potential issues or bottlenecks slowing down our site during our test of the hosting service.

Kinsta's DevKinsata feature provides a comprehensive development environment that makes it easy to develop applications locally on your computer. DevKinsata includes many helpful features such as version control which allows developers to roll back to previous versions of their code if needed, easy debugging capabilities with Xdebug integration, and deployments to production servers with just one click.

With the new Kinsta Cloudflare integration, we took advantage of a wildcard SSL certificate which let us secure our subdomains with just one certificate. A wildcard SSL is an SSL certificate that secures both a root domain and its individual subdomains. This is in contrast to other types of certificates that require you to list each individual subdomain on the certificate.

As part of its Cloudflare integration, Kinsta offers customers a unique benefit - reserved IP addresses. Reserved IPs are unique IP addresses assigned to each Kinsta customer site. These IP addresses are reserved exclusively for use by that specific customer and ensure that the DNS A-record IP address will not be shared by other sites on Cloudflare's network. In some cases, this can cause problems if a service blocks a spam site that happens to share the same Cloudflare IP address as your site.

We were also impressed with the Kinsta Brotli Compression Tool (a lossless compression format that is supported by all major browsers and achieves better compression ratios than gzip).

Kinsta also released a tool called Edge Caching. This is an incredibly powerful tool for websites running WordPress that can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to serve cached HTML to site visitors. Edge Caching is included free with all Kinsta plans, and no additional plugins are required.

Kinsta’s Edge Caching works by saving your website/page cache to Cloudflare’s global network of over 260 data centers. When site visitors load your website, cached responses will be delivered from the location closest to them, helping to reduce latency and ensure faster loading times.

With the help of the Early Hints, you can further improve site speed. Early hints is a modern web standard that defines a new 103 HTTP status code. Enabling this web standard on your site, it gives your site visitors’ browsers the chance to download certain resources in advance or in parallel with others. This results in a faster page rendering speed.

A curiosity of Kinsta’s hosting, but one that we found made sense, is the apparent lack of a temporary URL for checking the site runs accurately. However, this is a feature that can be easily turned on and off, and lasts for around 60 minutes when enabled. Given that a site doesn’t need to be seen by the public or crawlers before launch, this is useful.

For web hosting services in Australia, Kinsta CDN is in six Australian cities, including Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney.

Is Kinsta easy to use? 

We find Kinsta easy to use - from signing up to navigating through the dashboard. The web host provides you with an intuitive dashboard that makes hosting your website easy. The dashboard let us quickly access all the features and settings in one place, which makes it simple to manage our website’s performance and security.

With Kinsta, you can also set up and manage multiple websites from one account, as well as deploy applications, databases or static sites, meaning you don’t have to switch between different accounts every time you want to make changes or update your site or create a new web app.

Kinsta also has a number of helpful features that make managing your website easier. All these features are designed so that even those who aren’t tech-savvy can easily manage their website without too much hassle.

Kinsta plans and pricing

Kinsta offers different plans, ranging from $35/month to $1700/month. All plans include free wildcard SSL, CDN, staging, and unlimited migrations. But what do you get when you purchase one of these plans? The Single plans starts at $35/month and allows you to install 1 WordPress, 10 GB of storage space, 125 GB free CDN, and 35,000 visits per month. The Single-site plans scale with each step up getting more site visits, storage, and CDN bandwidth. Each Single site plan denotes the support amount of visits. The plans go as high as 1,250,000+ visits, 15 GB+ storage and 1000GB CDN bandwidth.

Multiple-site plans support multiple WordPress installs. Each plan name denotes the amount of WordPress installs supported. Each multiple-site plan supports multisite network and site cloning. For WP 2 ($70/mo) you get two WordPress installs, with 70,000 visits, 250 GB of CDN bandwidth, and 20 GB storage. As the plans increase in price the resources, site visits, and amount of WordPress installs increase too. The WP 40 plan ($450/mo) supports 40 WordPress installs, 60 GB storage, 1500 GB of CDN, and 75,000 monthly visits.

Kinsta also offers an Enterprise Plan for multiple sites, which starts at $675/month and includes 60+ WordPress installs, 100+ GB of space, 1,250,000+ visits, and a 30-day backup retention.

All the above plans come with unlimited free migrations and a 30-day money-back guarantee, so if you are not satisfied with the service, you can request a refund. Select plans on Single and Multiple-site tiers also include a one month free trial.

Agency Hosting

Kinsta’s Agency program is targeted, price-wise, at established digital agencies. The Agency 20 plan, which we tested, offers support for 20 WordPress installs, so potentially 20 clients. It also includes an extra site, for your agency. 500,000 visits, 50GB of storage, and 1,000GB CDN storage makes this an attractive starting point, but Agency 40 ($375/month with annual billing) and Agency 60 ($563/month under the same terms) are also available, with corresponding increases in installs.

These plans also include a white label provision, removing the Kinsta branding for reselling the hosting to the client, and access to beta tools. Backups, advanced caching, and migrations are also included with these packages, along with that all-important developer support. A number of tools are available here, from easy site cloning to Git integration and access to the Kinsta API.

Kinsta speed and experience

Kinsta argues that it is almost a certainty that users will see “faster page load times, along with back-end (WordPress dashboard) speed” when hosting with them. Faster than what, we asked ourselves. Faster than the average speed, faster than lightning or faster than Superman?

In any case, GTmetrix (a tool we used to test the speed performance of Kinsta’s main website) appears to agree with them given that it rated the performance of their website with an A (91%), which is not a result we often see. All major core metrics related to the speed were above the average, which looks pretty promising.

When it comes to uptime, Kinsta’s technical team monitors all of its users’ websites at all times, which means that they will be notified if any downtime occurs and lasts longer than five minutes, and, thus, prompt them to rush to resolve the issue. After monitoring Kinsta’s main website for a month using UptimeRobot, we couldn’t find a single trace of downtime, which does inspire confidence.

Latest results

We recently ran more tests on Kinsta for our best hosting for agencies guide. We did the same test we do for every host. We migrate a simple website and perform some baseline WordPress benchmark test and do some Siege testing for concurrent visitors. We used the Agency 20 plan. While these don't show what the server is like under load. It does show a good baseline score for site performance.

Kinsta security

Kinsta is one such provider that offers quality security measures (in our opinion) including SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificates. An SSL certificate is a type of digital certificate that provides encryption and authentication for data sent over the internet. It helps protect user information, like credit card numbers and passwords, from being accessed by malicious third parties.

An SSL certificate also helps verify the identity of a website so that users know they are connecting to the correct server and not a malicious one.

Kinsta uses Cloudflare's infrastructure to provide wildcard SSL certificates with 128-bit or higher encryption as well as 2048-bit RSA keys. Kinsta says its servers are also constantly monitored 24/7 for any signs of suspicious activity or hacking, which is good to know. Kinsta also offers a 99.9% SLA-backed uptime guarantee.

There's also a Malware Security Pledge in which Kinsta's team will help restore a site in the event of an attack. Kinsta have earned SOC 2 and ISO 27001 compliance so security standards are high and hopefully you'll never have to use that.

Customer support

Kinsta offers knowledgeable sales representatives who can help you find the hosting plan that best fits your website or project.

If you want a deeper dive into all of Kinsta’s features, consider scheduling a personalized demo with one of its experts. This is an excellent way to get familiar with Kinsta's powerful dashboard and hosting features, as well as ask any questions that come up during the process.

We had a few questions about our website and contacted Kinsta through its question form on the website. They got back to us the next day with answers tailored specifically to our hosting dilemma.

Kinsta’s support team is available 24/7/365 via live chat in the MyKinsta dashboard so that you can quickly receive help. You can also open up tickets here if there are ever any issues with your site.

As noted, we also tried Kinsta’s Agency 20 plan, arranging for a site to be migrated via a backup. The support operative who took ownership of this task completed it within a couple of hours, a timescale that included not just scanning the ZIP file for potential issues, but also fully migrating it and testing the site.

We later ran into an issue trying to point a domain at the hosting. This requires a bit more clicking and settings configuration than with other hosts (switching nameservers is just one aspect of this), but while I found this baffling at first, the support team member who walked me through it helped me solve it within 15 minutes.

There are more than a few self-help options including regularly updated documentation, free e-books, free webinars, a newsletter and a blog we mentioned before, and everything is dedicated to bringing knowledge about WordPress to its users. In addition to this, Kinsta’s YouTube channel is filled with step-by-step guides and the new ones are coming out on a week-to-week basis at the very least.

As an alternative, you can reach Kinsta’s “timely and knowledgeable” support via email and chat.

Kinsta alternatives

Much like Kinsta, Flywheel is a fellow US-based host specialized in “top-of-the-line” managed WordPress hosting solutions. Both of them strive to be beginner-friendly, offer well-rounded, feature-packed packages and are on the high-priced side of the spectrum. However, Kinsta’s least expensive solution starts at a whopping $30, half as much as what is offered by Flywheel. Therefore, if the price is the key criterion (since both hosts are competent) for you, you could save some bucks by going with Flywheel.

Bluehost is one of the most popular hosting options on the market today, even when it comes to managed WordPress hosting. In comparison with Kinsta, Bluehost has a myriad of hosting types and options besides WordPress and its WordPress plans are well-structured and suitable for newcomers. If you are, however, looking for premium managed WordPress options, you might find yourself at home with Kinsta.

DreamHost is a US-based provider supplying WordPress-optimized hosting solutions and related services, including a domain registration, which is something you won’t get with Kinsta. Another thing they don’t provide is a website builder and you’ll have that as an option with DreamHost. What is more, in addition to offering more hosting options, DreamHost has more pocket-friendly plans, so you’ll save some money as well.

Although HostGator does not specialize in WordPress hosting, it has a few rather attractive solutions on the offer. Nonetheless, if you are looking for a premium fully managed WordPress hosting (and you are ready to shell out the money) Kinsta might be a better pick. If you would rather have something simpler and more on the affordable side, HostGator is an excellent choice.

WP Engine is also a great alternative as it offers a wide range of services, from shared hosting to managed WordPress hosting and dedicated servers. WP Engine is known for its fast speeds and reliable uptime, as well as its excellent customer service and support team.

SiteGround is another great option if you’re looking for an alternative to Kinsta. This provider offers a variety of hosting plans that range from shared hosting to VPS and cloud solutions. SiteGround also has excellent customer service and support, which makes it a great choice if you need help getting started or have questions about how to use their services.

Is Kinsta right for you? 

Kinsta offers a range of features to help businesses get up and running quickly and easily, including easy scalability, managed updates, automated daily backups, and 24/7 support.

Kinsta offers a range of features to help businesses get up and running quickly and easily, including automatic scaling, managed updates, automated daily backups,SSH access, WP CLI, a powerful API, Application Performance Monitoring, and 24/7/365 support in 10 languages, with a response time within a minute and 98% client satisfaction.

Kinsta also prides itself on its performance and reliability - It’s caching technology ensures websites load faster than ever before; this helps keep visitors on your site longer which can lead to increased conversions.

Kinsta FAQs

Network Solutions was launched in 1979 as one of the first companies to provide DNS (domain name system) technology. Since then, it has developed to provide many more services, all related to web hosting. Today they provide “all you need, in one place”, that is: domain names and various hosting options with a whole variety of features and accessible applications including a page builder. The company is headquartered in the US, with its main office located in Herndon and its data center situated somewhere in North America.

In 2011, Network Solutions was acquired by Web.com Group, one of the leading web technology companies that provided services to millions of customers all over the world. Then, in 2021 web.com merged with EIG to become Newfold Digital. Later, in 2025 Newfold Digital consolidated brands and absorbed web.com into Network Solutions.

So, it's fair to say Network Solutions has had a long and varied life changing hands and merging more than most hosts. Is this Network Solution's final form? Who knows but one thing is certain. It's not staying power.

• Want to try Network Solutions? Check out the website here

• Also check out our roundup of the best shared web hosting

Is Network Solutions good value for money?

Network Solutions’ Starter Plan is perfect for businesses just getting started. This plan costs only $2.99 per month for the first year and includes 10 GB of disk space, 1 website, and five email boxes. You also get 25 FTP accounts, a drag and drop page builder, and unlimited bandwidth.

For $4.99 per month, the Essential Plan gives you even more features than the Starter Plan. It includes 20 GB of disk space, 3 websites, 1,000 email boxes, and a domain name included in your package (for one year). If your business needs more than the Essential Plan provides, consider Network Solutions Premium Plan. This plan covers all of the features of the Essential plan plus 40 GB disk space and supports 10 websites for $6.99 for the first year.

Is Network Solutions easy to use?

Because Network Solutions doesn’t exactly have a myriad of hosting options, picking out a preferred plan shouldn’t be a time-consuming decision. The first thing you’ll need to know is if you want a simpler cloud-based solution or a WordPress-optimized one. For the most part, together with these hosting packages, you’ll be getting email services as well. If not (and you want them), digging a bit more around the website will take you to a few email hosting solutions as well.

Network Solutions is a decent choice for anyone looking for an easy-to-use web hosting service with sufficient features. Not only does it offer a good range of benefits such as domain registration, design tools, email hosting, marketing tools, and more but its user interface is also incredibly intuitive and simple to navigate whether you’re a novice or an experienced user. 

All plans come with a proprietary control panel, which isn’t as user friendly as some industry-standard alternatives, but we managed to find our way around. From there, most of the famous apps can be yours after a click or two (WordPress, Joomla, Durpal and so on) and all developers out there will be glad to hear that a whole variety of website development features are supported as well (PHP5, Python, Ruby on Rails, Java Servlets, Zend Libraries and much more). A number of e-commerce features (and all-inclusive ecommerce solution) are available for purchase, as well as a competent drag-and-drop website builder.

Speed and experience

When trying to convince us of the superiority of their services, Network Solutions brings up their “reliable” uptime with the guarantee of 99.9%, live tech support and flexible hosting plans, without any promises regarding the speed. Not knowing what to expect, we tested the speed performance of Network Solutions’ main website using GTmetrix as a tool. It placed the website's speed performance above the average with the conclusive result of B (85%), which is quite good.

We decided to test the uptime of Network Solutions’ main website by using UptimeRobot and see if we're going to take advantage of the guarantees they provided us with. After a month of constant monitoring, UptimeRobot reported a few occasions of downtime, with the longest one lasting for 19 minutes straight. However, the total of downtime was around 42 minutes. This means the total recorded uptime was 99.917% and that Network Solutions managed to deliver on their promises by a whisker.

While this isn't a true reflection of the speeds you can expect from your site on shared hosting, it is a good indicator of how reliable and powerful Network Solutions' infrastructure is.

Help and support

The first help options you’ll probably notice with Network Solutions are their telephone number (which is advised to be used for urgent matters only) and “Contact us” button that will present you with a few ways to help yourself. Their knowledgebase (titled as “Help Center”) can be browsed with the help of a search box or you can pick out some of the preselected categories. There seems to be a decent number of articles which are mostly written in an easy-to-follow way (often with pictures) and rated by users with a five-star rating system. 

If you would rather rely on support agents from Network Solutions’ technical team, you can get in touch with them via support ticket, live chat and telephone, all of which ought to be available around-the-clock.

Network Solutions features a community forum, where its registered users (we assume, since trying to proceed without registration made us hit the dead end) can seek answers to their questions, answer questions from other users or leave feedback for others to see. However, when we tried to register, not a single one from dozens of display names (and some were quite original) was deemed acceptable (the only explanation we got was “Name you entered is already in use”, which doesn’t seem to be the case), so we can’t report anything more than this.

The competition

Bluehost is also one of those hosts that will provide their users with everything need but also have servers in Europe and Asia. Even so, Bluehost provides a great value for money and offers (unlike Network Solutions) VPS hosting, managed WordPress and dedicated server in addition to basics, so it is better suited for more ambitious users.

HostGator can provide you with everything Network Solutions can and go beyond that, and we are not thinking about hosting types only. The entry-level (adorably named “Hatchling”) plan with HostGator includes a domain name, website transfer, unmetered bandwidth and SSL certificate, all cost-free. In comparison, Network Solutions’ elementary plan has less bonus features to attract new users with.

Both of those brands are also owned by Newfold Digital. If you wanted to look outside of that group you could also consider Hostinger.

Is Network Solutions right for you? 

Since it was founded at the end of the disco era, Network Solutions certainly knows how to get groovy with its hosting packages, offering a great deal of helpful tools to get your website down with a boogie in no time. 

When deciding on a web hosting service, there are many factors to consider such as price point, customer service availability, and uptime guarantee. Network Solutions offers all these features in one package, making them a great option for anyone who wants reliable web hosting without breaking the bank. 

Network Solutions FAQs

• We've also featured the best web hosting

If you've ever searched for cheap website hosting, then HostPapa is likely one of the brands you'll have come across. Based in Ontario, Canada, the company has been around for close to two decades.

After a series of aggressive acquisitions, HostPapa today has become one of the bigger hosting brands around. It's what I like to call a one-stop shop, offering everything website owners need, from hosting to security and more.

Overall, HostPapa is a brand that is worth a try if you're in the market for cheap hosting. You''ll just need to be careful at checkout not to select add-ons and be patient with the onboarding process.

HostPapa hosting plans and prices

HostPapa offers shared, VPS, dedicated, and reseller hosting. Because of its popularity, several WordPress plans are also available. These are built on different platforms, from shared to VPS. Additionally, you can get email hosting, Microsoft 365, premium SSL certificates, and more.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting plans range between $2.95/mo and $9.95/mo. These are the rates for 3-year terms. Following that, renewals cost from $8.99/mo to $27.99/mo, depending on your subscribed plan.

The lowest shared hosting plan (Essentials) offers decent specifications for a single website: 1 vCPU, 1GB RAM, and 25GB of NVMe storage. However, remember that this is shared hosting, so hosting resources aren't yours alone.

There's also what HostPapa calls Optimized WordPress hosting, which simply means they pre-install WordPress on your shared hosting account. The prices are identical, as are the specifications.

VPS and Managed WordPress Hosting

HostPapa offers managed and unmanaged VPS hosting. These plans are a step up from shared hosting. You'll find performance on VPS more consistent, since all the specified resources are yours alone.

The unmanaged VPS plans at HostPapa are, honestly, very cheap. Prices range from $5.95/mo to $59.95/mo, depending on resources provided. The cheapest plan (Start) offers 2 vCPUs, 2GB RAM, and 50GB of storage.

Managed VPS plans are meant for those who don't have the skills (or time) to manage a barebones virtual server. For this, you pay premium rates at HostPapa, ranging from $36.95/mo to $86.95/mo.

The last offering in the VPS segment is HostPapa's Managed WordPress plans. Think of this as Managed VPS plans, which are restricted to WordPress only. As such, prices fall between $19.95/mo to $114.95/mo.

Dedicated Servers and Reseller Hosting

If you're one of those with much higher hosting requirements, then HostPapa's dedicated servers are what you'll need. These plans offer you a custom-configured server, with specifications that would make boyish hearts go "Whopee!"

Prices on these range from $59.95/mo to $219.95/mo for unmanaged servers. If you want a managed dedicated server, be prepared to fork out the big bucks. Prices in this category range between $109.95/mo to $269.95/mo. The most interesting part here is that there is no price hike on renewal for dedicated server plans.

Reseller hosting ranges between $14.95/mo to $57.95/mo. The specifications for these plans are rather modest since the focus is on white-label services and the number of cPanel accounts assigned to you.

Note: HostPapa does not offer a temporary domain name, so you must either have a domain name already registered or buy one from them to get started.

Getting started at HostPapa

Once you've decided which hosting plan you want, click the "Buy Now" button below that plan. You'll then head to a screen where you fill in your billing details and finalize the configuration for your hosting plan.

There are two key things you have to note here:

• Only those opting for shared hosting can choose their data center location. There are three locations available: The United States, Canada, and Europe.
• Pay attention to the optional add-ons. PapaCare Lite is selected by default. If you don't unselect that option, you'll find a significant amount getting billed monthly after the first month.

Onboarding process

Unfortunately, things don't start moving quickly once you've made your payment. With most other hosts, I've gotten onboarding emails almost immediately. HostPapa made me wait 5 minutes before emailing me an identity verification request.

This means you'll have to scan an ID document and scan your face, either on your phone or via webcam. If you wear glasses and can't see without them, things can get problematic since the facial scan requires you to remove them.

When all of this is done, you can finally access your user dashboard. This is where the magic happens. To get started with your website, click "My cPanel." I used it to install WordPress, which completed in a few minutes.

Speed and reliability

When testing web hosts, we typically sign up for the cheapest plan available. For HostPapa, that was the Essential shared hosting plan. We then upload a pre-built WooCommerce website to standardize our tests.

Typically, when an entire test category fails, it indicates that the host may have disabled certain operations. In this case, HostPapa seems to disallow filesystem operation and network speed tests. This has somewhat skewed our HostPapa system benchmark.

However, given the other parameters indicate healthy server operations. HostPapa's shared hosting performed well on CPU and memory operations and showcased impressive database times. All in, that's great news for WordPress fans.

Siege is our benchmark of choice for load testing. It sends multiple requests according to our parameters to test the server's ability to handle simultaneous transactions. Impressively, HostPapa's cheapest shared hosting account performed quite well.

It handled up to 9 concurrent users easily, with 100% successful transactions. However, this came at a small sacrifice in performance as increased loads resulted in some transactions being somewhat delayed beyond the norm.

Once we hit the server with 15 concurrent users, HostPapa began to struggle. There was a slight uptick in failed transactions and longer completion times for some transactions. Still, a 95% success rate for shared hosting is good.

Customer support and knowledge base

HostPapa has one of the most extensive knowledge bases I've come across. Much of the content is helpful, especially the short guides that teach novices simple things like DNS pointing and basic WordPress tutorials. For those more visual, there are also various video tutorials.

It also offers great customer support via live chat, email, phone, or a ticketing system. If you need more assistance, sign up for one of their short one-to-one training sessions (for free!).

Who should consider using HostPapa?

Let me be honest. HostPapa is cheap and offers decent performance. However, once the cheap introductory pricing wears off, you'll be better off elsewhere. Given the cost of their VPS plans, it would be far more cost-effective to sign on with Cloudways.

Or, if you prefer, consider a WordPress-only expert like WP Engine or Kinsta. They might be more expensive, but you'll get the powerful hosting that you'll need to squeeze every bit of performance out of your WordPress website.

I'd recommend HostPapa only if you're:

• Brand new to web hosting.
• Have price as one of your key considerations.
• Require lots of help getting started with hosting.

Final verdict

While writing this review, I had to remind myself that I was on a web hosting plan that costs $2.95/mo. For that price, HostPapa demonstrated performance that, to me, felt good. However, the onboarding process did turn me off because of the email delays, and the emails didn't come in a logical order which may leave some new users slightly confused.

There are many more pros than cons to this web host, and unless you're playing in the big leagues, the plans here are worth a go. Give it a shot for yourself and see what I mean.

HostPapa FAQs

• We've also highlighted the best web hosting

As the name suggests, UK2 is a UK-based host, headquartered in London, and it has been in the web hosting industry since 1998. During more than two decades of operation they’ve registered more than one million of domain names of websites in more than 200 locations around the globe, so there is definitely a reason why they are considered one of the largest web hosting companies in the UK and why they're listed on our best UK web hosting guide.

• Want to try UK2? Check out the website here

The UK2’s main website is not quite as intuitive as it should be and many users might spend considerable time navigating around while forgetting what they were looking for in the first place. The first search window you encounter upon entering the site isn’t related to knowledgebase, FAQ or similar information source, but rather a way to check availability of your desired domain name. If anything, the website is responsive and appears to be updated regularly.

UK2 has a decent-looking blog filled with the various interrelated subjects, some of which are highlighted by the criteria of popularity and publication date. It appears to be active and updated on a monthly basis.

As for the social media, they have presence at Facebook and Twitter, and both profiles seem to be active and available for customer interaction.

Pricing

Upon entering the site, you will be offered a hosting a plan that is currently on sale with details about pricing, discount and additional features. Scroll down and you will be prompted to “design your perfect hosting solution” by picking the options that define you as a user and your professional requirements. Following this, you’ll be offered three hosting plans that ought to suit your needs, varying by the hosting type, price and added features. Basic shared hosting, WordPress, Cloud, Managed, SSD VPS and dedicated server are all at your disposal. 

UK2's basic and most budget-friendly Starter WordPress plan starts at £4.99 ($6.47) a month, but if you choose a year or two, the monthly price drops to mere £2.00 ($2.59) which is £23.95 ($31.06) for a whole year or £47.90 ($62.12) for two. This will get you one domain name, access to FTP, 5GB SSD Disk Space, five 10GB Pro IMAP Emails, Cloudflare CDN (which is always included with WordPress hosting plans) as well as backups and automatic malware removal. 

If you are more ambitious, you could go with Business Hosting, which will allow you to build up to a 100-page website and up to 1000 x 10GB email addresses to share with your contacts and customers, all within reasonable prices. All previously mentioned plans include a 30-day money-back guarantee. 

Although VPS Cloud Hosting is consider to be aimed at the tech-savvy, UK2 will throw in “state-of-the-art” cPanel and first-rate 24/7 customer support to make everything much easier.

When paying methods are concerned, the options include direct debit, debit/credit card and PayPal, which is more than what is usually available.

Ease of use

Upon picking out your plan, you’ll be immediately offered a few add-ons such as Website SEO Guru (a marketing tool) or SiteLock (which should improve security of your website) and all for an extra price. After this, you’ll be prompted to choose your domain or use an existing one, add your personal details and select a paying method. At every step of the way, a “Having problems?” window will pop up, offering you to contact customer service via telephone or live chat, which may be needed because some parts of the process are not as intuitive as they could be.

While selecting the paying method you are offered a checkbox choice to store it, which is quite refreshing to see. The last step is creating an account password monitored by quite rigorous strength meter, after which the sign-up process is finalized.

Since UK2 uses an industry-standard cPanel, if you’ve used web hosts in the past and are familiar with the layout, you’ll have no trouble navigating around. Even if you haven’t, cPanel makes for a largely easy-to-use experience. If you’ve selected VPS or a dedicated server, you’ll be able to decide between a selection of cPanels, depending on whether you use Windows or Linux as an operating system. 

In any case, with CPanel you’ll be able to efficiently monitor and manage everything, from variety of tools and add-ons to domain, checking or changing your account details, upgrading your hosting plan or contacting your customer service. Installing WordPress, MediaWIki, Magento, Softaculous or similar apps is only a click or two away.

Although the UK2 doesn’t provide any kind of website builder with its standard account, the website builder feature is offered through the main website and throws in social media integration, search engine optimization, editing tool for digital media and SSL certificate with support, which is always nice to have.

Speed and experience

Following the test run with GTmetrix, we found that UK2 passed the speed trial, at least judging by the performance of their main site. It took 6.9 seconds to fully load from the average of 8.2 and 74 requests from the average of 89, which shows a good performance.

Interestingly, when it comes to uptime, UK2 doesn’t make any definite promises, besides pointing out that “performance and ultimate uptime are their top priority”. Despite that, during the uptime test that run over two weeks on their main website, we recorded no downtime at all and an insignificant amount of oscillations. Although the period we tested is relatively short for a definitive judgment to be made, all things considered, UK2 is clearly off to a good start.

Support

On first impression, the knowledgebase is as confusing as the main site. They offer an alphabetical index in the center of the page, a list of “Recently updated articles” on the right and the tree of categories on the left side. To find a desired piece of information you’ll need to make your way through several subcategories. In its defense, there is search box in the top right corner, but that will get you plenty of articles that only deal with topics in brief, so you will be forced to invest more time in your research.

To avoid that, you could, as suggested on the same page, simply contact the customer support. Luckily, UK2 provides 24/7 support 365 days a year via telephone, live chat or ticket and it is truly one of the highlights of the company’s offer. 

UK2 Help Centre currently doesn’t have a support forum.

The competition

Both UK2 and Tsohost are web hosting companies originating from the UK and with more than decade of experience behind them. They offer more than a decent array of features and extras, a newbie-friendly approach, as well as competent support. However, cPanel that Tsohost offers is their customized version, so if you are looking for the industry-standardized one, UK2 might be a right choice for you.

Bluehost is an equally competent host from the US, with years of experience behind them, a great deal of features on offer, more budget-friendly prices than UK2 and all of their plans including unlimited bandwidth. Therefore, if data centers inside the UK are not a must for you, Bluehost can provide you with everything you are looking for.

UK2 as well as Hostgator are newbie-friendly, but all plans offered by the latter include a free website builder, which is a great tool to have at the start. In addition, although both of them offer 24/7 support, Hostgator’s website is more user-friendly and its knowledgebase is better organized, so if that matters to you, Hostgator might be an ideal choice. 

Hostinger also have some really great value VPS plans but they're unmanaged. They may not be a UK hosting brand but they do have servers in the UK and a range to top hosting features for beginners.

Final verdict

UK2 certainly isn’t the most affordable host to have, but it offers competent customer service and a cPanel packed with helpful tools which will boost the morale for beginners. If you want all of the abovementioned features with the addition of unmetered bandwidth and more budget-friendly prices, then Hostgator or Bluehost could be a more suitable choice for you.