Hi -

For a non-commercial site that I'm trying to help setup, the initial main user group is UK residents.

However, when looking at hosting solutions, I don't actually see a problem with having the site hosted from the US, if they can offer a better deal than a UK host.

Am I being naive here with regards to practicalities?

Just asking,

Brian

We are uk based and 95% of our customers are uk based ,all our advertising is aimed at the uk market,our servers are in the usa ,in my opinion the time difference between accessing websites from the uk to us servers is not an issue infact i notice a trend of well established uk hosts who only offered uk servers are now offering us based servers ,it`s a sad fact that the cost of bandwith in the uk is too high compared to the usa .
providing the servers are on a good quality network there is no real advantage of hosting your website on a uk based server.

You can be certain that USA is far cheaper, but then you also need reliability, which most good host have. Never used a UK host, but you can host anywhere in the world - all you need is a dial-up at least!

We are based in the UK and host the sites in the US. We used to host in the UK, however these days the networks are good enough that it doesn't make much difference. It still makes a difference however where pings are involved, for things like game servers. If you were running a game server for UK based residents, I would locate it in the UK, not the US as there would be a noticeable difference in performance. However if it's just for a website, it shouldn't matter :)

Hello
We pay the same for bandwidth in the UK and US.
This will always be the case unless you are talking about the very bottom end of the market.

US hosting will work provided you have an ISP with good connections but it will be inherently less reliable due to the larger number of networks involved in the route.

Ping time to our UK servers 29ms
Ping time to our US servers 118ms

It probably doesnt matter but
Put it this way:
We put our mission critical applications on Uk based servers.
If there was not a difference we wouldn't bother.

Also customers expect UK Hosting to mean hosted within the UK
and there can be PR and marketing problems if its not.

We actually make one of our USP's that we have a choice of servers in three countries.

Gordon

There are many UK hosts on this forum that have their servers based in the US (but not all) simply due to cost. Maybe, you can get the best of both worlds by hosting your site(s) with such a host. (Genarally cheaper then standard UK based hosts and should you have any problems/ support issues, there will be no time delay as the host is UK based)

Regards

Have you guys ever seen routing where like:

UK Network #1 wants to send data to UK Network #2 and it atually goes like


UK Net #1 -> US Network -> UK Net #2? I think this used to happen before some times. But a lot of US companies (like our upstream is based on the North east but has bandwidth available in the UK as well).

No
I have never seen that.
It would be unusual because most UK ISP's connect through LINX
for UK traffic and one or two US networks for transatlantic.

Do you mean North East England or North East USA?
If you mean NE UK then I am currently in a legal dispute with a NE leased line provider over dodgy routing...........

Gordon

US BANDWIDTH = CHEAP

UK BANDWIDTH = EXPENSIVE (Lets remember, we british are supposed to just put up with high prices because we'll never rebel against them - just like the Nuclear waste we thank (and probably pay) other countries for sending to us)

If speed is critical for your UK traffic, think about hosting your site in the UK.

Otherwise, the US would be the best place to host your site.

Well, why not if you can afford it, have both? one in the US and one in England? Then you can have smart routing :-) or use a service like Akami.. Yeah it costs more, but it is worth it (if you need it).

Originally posted by Turboz
US BANDWIDTH = CHEAP

UK BANDWIDTH = EXPENSIVE (Lets remember, we british are supposed to just put up with high prices because we'll never rebel against them - just like the Nuclear waste we thank (and probably pay) other countries for sending to us)

This is rubbish.

I pay the same in the UK and US for similar quality bandwidth.
Its possible to get very cheap bandwidth in the UK but nobody will use it because of the reliability issues.

Also, its more expensive to run a business in the UK if you have employees because of the NI (Tax) on employees and other overheads.

The main difference in pricing is the VAT which is 17.5%

OK
Go and have a look at the suppliers of transit bandwidth and see their prices, or look at colo bandwidth prices in the major data centres.
Its not expensive.

Gordon

I have to agree with Gordon. UK bandwidth can be sourced at a price as competitive as comparitive US suppliers.

The number of times I have seen on this board the blanket claim that "US bandwidth is always cheaper" makes me wonder if anyone has actually approached any carriers in the UK and hammered out a real price from them...

Well we have UK and US severs that we use, I think the UK hosting we have is overpriced and I am considering dumping it in January when the contract is over, However uptime is 100% most of the time so as long as i can find a decent US host i will be moving, Ive had problems with a few of them and i wouldn't move just because its cheaper.
If you can find a reliable webhost though they are pretty much the same whatever side of the atlantic they are.

Sincere thanks for the replies, folks.

I wasn't actually seeking to specifically avoid UK companies.

Basically, I stumbled in here while researching an overcrowded field - and then intensified the search in here, checking up on customer referrals first, and budgeting requirements second.

In the end I narrowed down to a couple of US hosting companies.

As the USA basically is the internet, and as I've never noticed being unable to load a website simply because it was across the Atlantic, I figured for general purposes there shouldn't be a problem - so long as there weren't to many hops to the backbone at the host end.

Anyway, thanks again, folks,

Brian