Where do I host my new website?

[TelephoneTree]

It needs to be bomb proof as it's my shopfront. Is Go Daddy any good?
Also - do I have to be hosting it before I can set up my email etc...

go daddy is absolutely fine

apparently they have dodgy ethics ?? and prone to problems. Are they all much of a muchness?

What about nativespace? Do you know about them? The person doing my website said to steer clear of Go Daddy but I just have no idea about all this.

These guys are very good
www.vidahost.com

Probably best to have your domain and hosting ready, before you set up email. But your website doesn't have to be ready.

Don't go to godaddy

...one of the less upsetting links.

Thank you both.
wyrdyBird - I was told that cloud hosting wasn't the way forward but I can't remember why. Do you think it's a problem?

I'm with Bluehost. Seven months in no problems at all.

Just looked up Bluehost - I'm in the UK and I think I need somewhere in the UK incase of problems?

The vidahost cloud package is, by all accounts, very user friendly and easy to use. And quite cheap! :)

If you prefer to stick to standard, shared cPanel hosting, they still offer it here
www.vidahost.com/cpanel-hosting

Hm, repeating myself slightly there ... distracted by the football. ;)

Telephone, I'm UK based and Bluehost are really speedy and operate 24/7. They even rang me from San Francisco the other day to see if I was happy so far. I was!

If your site is UK based you should really have UK based hosting. Search engines take server location into account when ranking websites.

I'm a freelance web designer and host all my clients sites with tsohosts. Most of my Web design friends do. Great prices and the best technical service I've ever had

I have heard good things about tsohost too.

They have joined forces with vida, to become the Paragon internet group, so a good strong team building up there.

Elspeth makes a good point about server location. If your target audience is in the UK, you would be better off with UK based servers, for search engine ranking and site loading speed.

Thank you so much - I'll look them up. Sounds good!!!

Is it normal to have to pay £30pm for email??

If you're talking about tsohosts dedicated email servers they're more for sending mass emails (to thousands of people) general email boxes are included with all the hosting packages including the £15 lite one.

How big is your website?

Ah I see, ok that will suit me I think. Thank you!