Hosting in Ireland/UK

peterd

Just wondering what the Irish webmasters think of hosting in the UK/US as opposed to Ireland. Is it worth it to host in Ireland if you could host on an equal service (maybe better) at a % of the cost? What exactly are you paying for when hosting with an Irish company?

I notice that Digiweb are expanding to the UK now. They will have to drop they're prices *big* time if they stand a chance in that market. We all know that the UK is in a league of it's own compared with Ireland with respect to hosting competition and really cheap prices. And finally, if you were given the choice to host with Digiweb Ireland for a min of €189/year, or Digiweb UK for maybe a third of that, who would you choose ?

flamegrill

For a dedicated RaQ you will pay $200 a month from datapipe.net, you will pay Euro 199 for the same here in ireland from www.hosting365.ie.

In this case the irish price is lower than the american price. Thats not half bad. euro 199 is 121 pounds sterling. Sounds pretty ok to me?

dahamsta

You can get RaQ's for half that in the U.S.

adam

flamegrill

With the same spec and bandwidth per month?

got any URL's ?

RFHost

You can get a RaQ from rackshack.net for $99 a month with 300Gigs of transfer. They are also very reliable I have a few servers with them!!

peterd

I was not looking for plugs when I started this topic. Please re-read first post if you have to.

flamegrill, I *have* a ded server with hosting365 :rolleyes:

steve-hosting36

Hi Ronan,

Rackshack are cheap, cheerful and unmanaged, you get a great price, but zero tech support. If you know what you are doing, and are comfortable running your own box, then that is probably the way to go.

If you want more support, local service, etc, etc, then expect to pay a little more

Stephen

dahamsta

Ok, let's answer the questions...

Is it worth it to host in Ireland if you could host on an equal service (maybe better) at a % of the cost?

For the most part, there is very little difference in connectivity terms, as against quite a large difference in monetary terms. It mostly comes down to whether the user is willing or wishes to deal with an Irish company. I'm a bit upstream from regular hosting acounts, but I would prefer to deal with an Irish company. They would have to at least match a foreign service in price though, and that's very difficult with the cost of bandwidth in Ireland.

What exactly are you paying for when hosting with an Irish company?

I've never hosted with an Irish company. Back when I was actually using a hosting account, Irish hosting companies were vastly overpriced, were for the most part opaque (they didn't make it clear) resellers, and simply couldn't be trusted. Now I run dedicated machines, and although Ireland is catching up, it still has a way to go. It was the opactity that annoyed me though. If they had been more honest, they may very well have gotten my business.

And finally, if you were given the choice to host with Digiweb Ireland for a min of €189/year, or Digiweb UK for maybe a third of that, who would you choose ?

Neither. In general though, I would go for the cheaper option. If a company in Ireland was able to match the UK price, and they had a good reputation, then I would probably go with the Irish company. I might even be willing to pay more to the Irish company if they were communicative and easy to get on with - and I'm not talking about the sales department here.

adam

mneylon

As other people have commented the price is one of the main problems.
However apart from the price, there are also issues regarding features. Obviously if you rent a dedicated server you have complte control. Unfortunately, for many smaller businesses, this is not a realistic option.
Many of the 'starter' packages offered by some of the bigger Irish companies sound 'great', but offer pathetic features. Charging over €20 for setup is unreasonable, as are the prices many of them quote for adding a MySQL dsn. If I started going on about the prices that they charge for domain registration.... If I can resell .net/.com/.org/.biz/.info at US$15 and still make a profit, why are so many of them still charging prices akin to those of Network Solutions (Verisign)?

The worst example of pricing that I have seen to date has to be the IR£20 for a hyperlink!!!

What it all boils down to is this: If you can get away with charging ridiculous prices, and still get customers, there is no incentive to change things. When people wake up to the reality, then things will change.
However, the one thing that can really make the difference is the level of support. Last year when I was pricing 'cheap' hosting I found some wonderful 'deals' - US$20/year for example. Of course the servers were usually down, but if you want to cut corners....

yellum

The trouble with a lot of these hosting companies is that they are one or two man operations, doing sales, tech support and sys admning at the same time. They may have a deal in some server farm to give you good bandwidth on a good connection but if **** hits the fan while they're out sick you are rightly screwed.

Some of these people can talk the talk but when it comes to tech stuff they can mess up.

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Going on a tanget here
One instance is when an Irish Hosting Company had an insecure way of handling form results. I ended up finding a world readable txt file on their server with creditcard details of around 100 people with entries going back for over 12 months.

I really didn't know what to do at the time about it so I just contacted the hosting company and they brushed its seriousness away and fixed the hole. Since I didn't want to copy the contents of the file to my hd I had no way of contacting the people whos cardnumbers were viewable by everyone. The hosting company never contacted their customers to inform hem to change their card number. I know this as friend of mine also hosted with them.

Return from tanget
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Unless these companies have some sort of customer complaints manager or have some type of quality assurance in place I wouldn't use one again.

I can't see anything useful for hosting with an Irish Company as shouting down the phone to someone in London or Dublin is the same to me. I also find English and American companies are better at support and don't tell you to contact them through their java applet chat thing.

The only trouble with americans is the time difference and the accent barrier though with techy things we speak almost the same language.

steve-hosting36

Hi Yellum,

I think it is infair to tar us all with the same brush, the Irish hosting (and general net services) landscape is changing, albeit very slowly. Companies here are starting to mature, and pricing, etc is starting to reflect that.

We are one of the very few companies who actually own and run our own boxes in Ireland, and have gone to the expense and trouble of setting up a 'real' business, with offices, staff, phone systems, and all the hardware and software that goes into running a business that we can be proud of. We also try to give the best value we can while making enough to ensure we will still be here in six months time

We provide knowledgeable tech support (three techs currently) on the end of a freephone number, and are trying to implement services and systems to constantly improve our service.

I for one, would be delighted to take feedback from this (or any forum) on what we, and the wider hosting community in Ireland, could be doing better, or more of, and would be thrilled to see a body like the IIA (for example) take a more aggressive role in the accreditation and standards-setting for internet companies, particularly hosting and service providers. At the moment, there are simply no barriers to entry and no defined standards. A 15 year old can lease a $99 a month server and set up a hosting company overnight. No harm to that, but when the 15 year old decides the exams are on the way, or this hosting thing is too much work, and shuts off the server or has problems, or wants to go on holidays, it gives the whole industry a bad name.

I'm open to suggestion - perhaps the establishment of an Irish 'host review' or Internet Services review site or board? Perhaps even the addition of such an area to boards or one of the other fora?

Just my 2.5c
Stephen
www.hosting365.ie

peterd

I have dealt with several hosting companies both in Ireland and abroad, and the best I have come across to date has been hosting365 . I believe that they will be leading the Irish hosting scene and are already making an impact in they're first few months of business (watch this space). I think the reason that Irish hosting companies have been able to price their "packages" at such a high price, is, for the main part, because they have been able to get away with it! With newer, more competitive companies arriving on the scene, there isn't much room for "slackers", about time too :rolleyes:

misterq

The sad thing is that people who should be reading the likes of this thread don't. They really don't have a clue about what they are buying and it is pot luck whether or not they purchase from a decent hosting provider.

The likes of an outfit in Galway that charge DOUBLE for hosting a .IE domain spring to mind (and no, it doesn't include .IE registration).

I think like most things on the Internet, it's new and it's a learning process for those that aren't very technically minded.
The cream always comes to the top in the end though.

Ronan

dahamsta

The likes of an outfit in Galway that charge DOUBLE for hosting a .IE domain spring to mind (and no, it doesn't include .IE registration).

I charge scandalous prices for IE domain names now, although that doesn't run to hosting. €250 for a registration, €500 for a transfer. I'm entirely clear with my customers as to /why/ I charge that though.

adam

steve-hosting36

Hi Adam- do they pay???!?!?

Stephen

dahamsta

Hi Adam- do they pay???!?!?

No. I don't want them to. That's the whole point.

adam

buddy

Originally posted by dahamsta
Hi Adam- do they pay???!?!?

No. I don't want them to. That's the whole point.

adam

What do you mean by that?

Do you want them to use .co.uk or .com's instead!

peterd

Some of us are not happy with the IEDR's method of domain "management". But that is for another day.

mneylon

Don't mention the IEDR! Please!

tmcd

Below is what i got for $59 from an American company.

» Super Fast NT Server
» 24 Hour Online Support
» ASP UPLOAD

» 200MB Web Space
» Unlimited FTP Updates
» 24/7 FTP access

» Banner Free Hosting
» 99.9% Uptime
» iHTML script support

» 1 Sub Domains
» Full ASP Support
» Expert email support

» 10 Email Accounts
» Database Support
» Log files Access

» Email Aliases
» CGI/Perl
» ODBC Connections

» Email Forwarding
» Server Backups
» Web control panel

» 'Catch Them All' Email
» Server Side Includes
» No Set Up Fees

» Unlimited Bandwidth
» ASP Components
» Same Day Setup!

If I were to do It again and look for an Nt Server after looking at hosting365.ie's site I'd probably sign up with them.
It sure is great getting a great hosting package for half nothing but if your site has any problems Im always limited to e-mail which means probably a 24 wait on a reply or more importantly a fix. Where's im sure if I were with 365.ie the problem is only a phone call away or better still an hours drive up the road.

PhilipMarlowe

I have hosted a few sites with chicagowebs in the US - it suits me because I mess around with them after hours mostly and thats work time for them..... That said, the longest I have had to wait for an email reply has been 10 mins.... and that was on a Sunday during the day here.... ie, about 7am. their time Sunday morning...
www.chicagowebs.com
I switched our work site to them from IOL (not the regular webspace type account, a proper "NT virtual server"one) after wanting to do some ASP and UBB type stuff and being told repeatedly by IOL "no can do..."