Here are the best UK web hosting providers.

Rank	Name	Price/mo	Setup	Diskspace	Bandwidth	POP	Features	Rating / Reviews
1	Krystal	From £2	Free	up to 50,000 MB	up to 2,500 GB	Unlimited	CGI-bin, PHP, mySQL, Backups, etc. SSL, not oversold	Krystal Review
2	Hostmonster	$6.95	Free	300,000 MB	3,000 GB	Unlimited	CGI-bin, PHP, mySQL, FPage, SSH, Ruby, etc. Host Unlimited Domains, $100 credit, Site Builder (FREE Domain)	Hostmonster Review
3	iPower Hosting	$6.95	Free	300,000 MB	3,000 GB	2,500	SSL / CGI / PHP, 25 MySQL Databases, $80 in Advertising Credits, Host 25 Domains in One (FREE Domain)	iPower Hosting Review
4	BlueHost	$6.95	Free	300,000 MB	3,000 GB	2,500	CGI-bin, PHP, mySQL, FPage, SSH, RoR, etc. (FREE Domain)	BlueHost Review
5	VistaPages	$6.95	Free	350,000 MB	4000 GB	Unlimited	CGI-bin, PHP, mySQL, Frontpage, etc. $25 Yahoo! Search Credit (FREE Domain)	VistaPages Review
6	AN Hosting	$4.95	Free	500,000 MB	5,000 GB	Unlimited	Host 40 domains, CGI-bin, PHP, mySQL, $120 in Advertising Credits (FREE Domain)	AN Hosting Review
7	PowWeb	$5.77	Free	300,000 MB	3,000 GB	Unlimited	SSL / CGI / PHP, 75 MySQL Databases, FPage,Fantastico, etc. Site Builder, Flash (FREE Domain)	PowWeb Review
8	HostICan	$6.95	Free	200,000 MB	2,500 GB	Unlimited	2000+ FREE Templates, CGI-bin, PHP, mySQL, FPage, Fantastico, etc. Host 2 Domain (FREE Domain)	HostICan Review
9	Lunarpages	$6.95	Free	350,000 MB	3,500 GB	Unlimited	$700 CoffeeCup Web Software, ASP, JSP, PHP (FREE Domain + 10 Free Add-ons)	Lunarpages Review
10	Voxtreme	$7.95	Free	200,000 MB	500 GB	5,000	SSL / CGI / PHP, mySQL, FPage, Fantastico, etc. Site Builder (FREE Domain)	Voxtreme Review
= 5-Star Rating = 4-Star Rating

Web site hosting

 

Customers need to evaluate the requirements of the application to choose what kind of hosting to use. Such considerations include database server software, scripting software, and operating system. Most hosting providers provide Linux-based web hosting which offers a wide range of different software. A typical configuration for a Linux server is the LAMP platform: Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python. The webhosting client may want to have other services, such as email for their business domain, databases or multi-media services for streaming media. A customer may also choose Windows for its hosting platform. The customer still can choose from PHP, Perl, and Python but may also use ASP .Net or Classic ASP.

 

All of hosting services we have reviewed also provide an interface control panel (e.g. cPanel, Plesk or others) for managing the Web server and installing scripts as well as other services like e-mail.

 

Types of hosting

 

Free web hosting service:

Usually advertisements are automatically placed on sites being hosted, and is often very limited when compared to paid hosting. The customer usually has no control over the type of advertisements placed on their site.

Shared web hosting service:

This is generally the most economical option for hosting as many people share the overall cost of server maintenance. A Web site is placed on the same server as many other sites, ranging from a few to hundreds or thousands. Typically, all domains may share a common pool of server resources, such as RAM and the CPU. All the hosts we have reviewed provide shared hosting as well as other types of hosting services.

Reseller web hosting:

Allows clients to become web hosts themselves. Resellers could function, for individual domains, under any combination of these listed types of hosting, depending on who they are affiliated with as a provider. Resellers' accounts may vary tremendously in size: they may have their own virtual dedicated server to a collocated server.

Virtual Dedicated Server:

Where the server is sliced up into virtual servers. Each user feels like they're on their own dedicated server, but they're actually sharing a server with many other users. The users may have root access to their own virtual space.

Dedicated hosting service:

The user gets their own Web server and gains full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, the user typically does not own the server. Another type of Dedicated hosting is Self-Managed or Unmanaged. This is usually the least expensive for Dedicated plans. The user has full administrative access to the box, which means the client is responsible for the security and maintenance of his own dedicated box.

Managed hosting service:

The user gets their own Web server but is not allowed full control over it (root access for Linux/administrator access for Windows); however, they are allowed to manage their data via FTP or other remote management tools. The user is disallowed full control so that the provider can guarantee quality of service by not allowing the user to modify the server or potentially create configuration problems. The user typically does not own the server. The server is leased to the client.

Colocation web hosting service:

Similar to the dedicated web hosting service, but the user owns the server; the hosting company provides physical space that the server takes up and takes care of the server. This is the most powerful and expensive type of the web hosting service. In most cases, the colocation provider may provide little to no support directly for their client's machine, providing only the electrical, Internet access, and storage facilities for the server. In most cases, the client would have his own administrator visit the data center on site to do any hardware upgrades or changes.

Clustered hosting:

Having multiple servers hosting the same content for better resource utilization.

Grid hosting :

Relatively a new web hosting buzz, this form of distributed hosting is when a server cluster acts like a grid and is composed of multiple nodes. Being highly fault tolerant, this system is breaking new grounds when it comes to the network stability factor.

 

 

All of hosting providers we have reviewed also provide the following web host service:

• File hosting service: hosts not web pages but files
• Image hosting service
• Video hosting service
• Blog hosting service