Hi,
I'm looking for a cheap dedicated server in the UK.
I'd prefer a Cobalt RaQ (because of it's simplicity) although am willing to try any suggestions (apart from servers running Win NT or 2000!!)
Please tell me if you know any good UK sites offering great prices for this and even better if they have no setup fee. The £200 and no technical support put me off UK2net and Tele7.net.

Thanks for any help.

Regards,
Robert Kerry

http://www.kdawebservices.com - Although they don't advertise it yet Karl said its something they are adding in the new year. They are by far the best uk host that offers this kind of service.

http://www.webfusion.com - Umm not sure servers are fast but a bit pricey.

http://www.webtapestry.co.uk - Servers nice and fast support lacks a bit.

http://www.lighthouseservers.com - dont know anything about them but good prices.

http://www.uk2.net - crap.

http://www.simple-internet.com - not yet avliable but coming soon. They say they arent anything todo with webnetics who just closed but id bet my life on it they are.

the link to simple-internet is http://www.simple-internet.net and it does look suspicious although if you look at their reseller package it is a lot like fasthosts, and I doubt webnetics would resell a fasthosts package.

I think I might choose between:
webtapestry.co.uk
cwcs.co.uk
&
intrascape.com

(any other sites would be gratefully recieved)

Regards
Robert Kerry

Is there a particular reason you are looking for a UK based host?

Not really although I want to pay in UK Pounds sterling paying monthly through my Switch Debit card. As long as they except Switch and the prices are in pounds I'm not fussed.

Hmm.. oh ok.. Well I aint sure wether 4webspace does this, but they are a brilliant company. There support is excellent and they have a Raq special going on. The cost of a raq is only 100$/mth with no setup. Check them out at http://www.4webspace.com

Simple-internet is acutally owned by Pual guy an ex-employee of webnetics :).

http://www.ultraspeed.co.uk - not sure if thats right but they have a good rep. Being in the UK id expect them to do switch as its the biggest debit card in the uk.

There is no reason to host in the UK unless you are going co-lo.

Regarding paying for hosting by swich. A better solution is to pay quarterly or bi-annually with a wire transfer or Internet cheque. The money you will save make this worthwhile.

For example:

Your budget £200 ($298.78) PCM

4webspace offer hosting for $99 PCM.

Quarterly they would charge you: $297 (£198.81)

All reputable hosts will arrange quarterly or bi-annually billing so the inconvience of a wire transfer is worth it.

This all assumes of course you would be happy with a RAQ3 which personally I wouldn't use ever.

I think i'll stick to the UK.
Wire transfers cost around £20 each and Internet Cheques have not taken off in the UK (nobody can be bothered with a cheque book)

Thanks for all the help on this thread, I think i still prefer my original choices above although your links are appreciated.

By the way, if any of you own hosting companies in the UK i'm setting up host-free.org at present as there is only one UK hosting directory listed in dmoz so there must be a gap in the market (Please note they should be UK based).
email me at email@robert.tc with the URL and name of your site.

Robert Kerry

[Edited by robkerry on 12-27-2000 at 02:59 PM]

£15 per time u transfer or at least it is with hsbc.

Out of your selected you like id go with webtapestry.

£15 per time u transfer or at least it is with hsbc.

They don't charge me anything for a wire transfer or for processing dollar cheques either.

If you are doing this regularly ask if they will do it for free- they will

At the hsbc?.

They dont charge me to cash american dollars but do charge me to send money via them. I sent £135 to texas and it cost me £15 extra.

Well it's first direct and thats the same innit?

robkerry -> If you think of it, wiring the money to 4webspace, would turn out to be far cheaper then any other solution.

Originally posted by DaveC#
Well it's first direct and thats the same innit?

First Direct may offer this service as one of the 'perks' for not being able to use a local HSBC branch like a normal account holder might.

Anyway, why would you say that web tapestry's offer is the best??

Webtapestry have one of the best connections in the uk. Also if i remember correctly they are situated opposite british telecom. I was once hosted there for about 3 months before making a move over to webnetics which was a big mistake. The webtapstry network is like a bleeding rock lol.

Yes hsbc is first direct. Guess its because of the account i have with them is why im charged.

I've decided to start off with a Cobalt RaQ3 with 6Gb of bandwidth and a 10Gb hard disk.
When business picks up I'll upgrade!
Any tips on what to do when starting up??

From Webtapestry website

Linux Dedicated Servers
High quality Dell Optiplex Celeron 700mHz server
10 Gbs hard drive, 128Mb RAM, 5Gb data transfer

Mmmm 5Gb data transfer? And they don't place their bandwidth charges on their website.

5 gig is less than most quality virtual hosts offer.

Actually their website doesn't say much at all :(

Regarding their connection. being close to BT in the UK is not neccarily a good thing unless you have access to the BT backbone in the centre of London.

I've chosen to use cwcs for my dedicated server

(sorry for the poor clarity)

5GB bandwidth is a lot in the uk. A lot of UK Webhosts charge around £15 a month to users on a virtual account and they get 10mb space and 500mb.

Advice - take a look at http://www.bigbytes.co.uk and what the other uk hosts provide. If you can charge prices like what netplan charge you'll be a millionaire this time next month LMAO.

5 gig is a piss poor amount of datatransfer. Someone better than me will work that out over a month and it is a paltry amount of traffic.

To host anything more than a picture of you and your dog would be impossible with that amount of data transfer nevermind attempting to host a directory.

Heres my figure for my UK website

[Quote]
(Figures in parentheses refer to the 7 days to 15-Dec-2000 01:00).

Data transferred (7 days) : 14.471 Gbytes (14.439 Gbytes)
Average data transferred per day: 1.957 Gbytes (1.862 Gbytes)
[Quote]

Now tharts only 50/60k of pageviews- so as our american cousins say 'do the math' :)

I know its a piss poor amount but that doesnt stop uk hosts charging that price and giving crappy amounts of bandwidth. Thats why i use tera-byte.

Dave,

Sorry to butt in, but it depends on the type of site you runs. Generally most ppl don't require more than 3 Gbs anyway, so 5 Gb is sufficient for most ppl. It's when your site becomes more popular (as yours obviously is) that you start requiring more GBs.

Good point well made BC.

Nevertheless if someone is making the leap from virtual to dedicated hosting surely 5gig defeats the purpose?

When the space shuttle was built NASA didn't say 'This thing can take you to Mars but we are only going to buy enough fuel to get us to the end of the runway'

Just re-read the thread, and my my. What am I thinking today? :confused:

Yes, excellent point Dave... 5 GBs for a dedicated server?! Ouch.

Indeed BC indeed :(

I had my heart set on a Cobalt RaQ server as they are so easy to configure and have all the best features already installed. The only thing stopping me from going with UK2net is the setup fee of £199 which will put me at a loss straight away.
I suppose I could get one in the US although f cheques get lost in the post (which they frequently do from my experience) the server will be cut off.
What is the cheapest RaQ available without a setup fee (or with a small set up fee?)
The cheapest i've found is a RaQ4 with no setup fee although it is £99 a month and I dont think I could break even with the prices I will charge.

Originally posted by robkerry
...I dont think I could break even with the prices I will charge.

Checks through the mail aside, UK rate slightly more aside, if you dont think you could break even with the prices you will charge (on an approx $150/mo server then):

-you aren't charging enough.

Your best bet would be to go with http://www.4webspace.com $99 (£66.46 a month) for an RaQ3, You get a massive 100gb bandwidth. Youd need to upgrade the ram but you would have a cutting edge over other uk hosts with bandwidth. Staying in the uk is going to be very exspensive.

Send your checks via DHL think it costs an extra £10 for 24 hour devilvery but if you pay for a few months service at a time your not loosing money.

OK OK I've taken your advice and have signed up with 4webspace.com!!!

Could someone please tell me the address to send cheques to, as I forgot to write it down :-(

Once my cheque has been processed and i'm ready to go, what do I do next???

Where is the best place to advertise as a host??

What software should I install???

Any tips on what to do??

Best place to advertise for uk hosts is get a banner add on bigbytes.co.uk and get listed in there search engine. Take out an ad in something like .net since it has 90,000 + readers. Your going to be aiming at the uk market i take it then?.

Look at what other large uk hosts like webfusion , Ghoulnet, Kdawebservices offer. Install things like php4 (not many uk hosts have that), Get asp (if you can afford it), From looking around you'll know what to install and what not to :). Good Luck.



Tera-bytes address (i.e 4webspace.com) -
Tera-Byte Online Services
Suite 900, CN Tower
10004-104 Avenue
Edmonton, Alberta
T5J 0K1
Canada

What's the advantage of paying hosting with debit card or wire transfer or the like?

I thought all hosts simply accept a credit card, they have to pay a 2.5 - 3% commission to Visa or MasterCard (provided they have their own merchant account) and that's it.

Do I miss something here?

Originally posted by astra4
What's the advantage of paying hosting with debit card or wire transfer or the like?

I thought all hosts simply accept a credit card, they have to pay a 2.5 - 3% commission to Visa or MasterCard (provided they have their own merchant account) and that's it.

Do I miss something here?

I don't own and do not want to own a credit card. With a debit card I can keep track of my money.
It's a personal decision of whether you trust yourself and others with a credit card.

Originally posted by robkerry
It's a personal decision of whether you trust yourself and others with a credit card.

Heh, trust yourself? Ohhh, been there (done that). I keep a small limit on mine now. I could tell you stories. What do they expect when they give a college kid $75K worth of credit? (combined, all cards)

Ahhh, the good ol' days.