We have been with them around 9 months and I did a huge amount of shopping around because we had 10 sites to move and now have about 35 sites with them. The good feedback they were getting on the forums and around the web was enough to convince me.

I continue to be extremely impressed with the support they provide, the reliability goes without saying, I haven’t had an hour offline to my knowledge (which should be fairly accurate) as we are working on live sites everyday, throughout the day and often into the wee hours.

I have asked for support form them on Sunday afternoon and received accurate responses and help on more than one occasion within 40 mins. It makes our lives so much easier. And allows me to relax.

Some of the things that sold them to me:
+ UK based (just off the M25)
+ Linux (they also have windows)
+ Cpanel
+ Twice daily backups (managed through Cpanel)
+ SQL backups (they will restore)
+ Price

Some of my fav things now Im a customer:
+ Outstanding support
+ Always the most up to date software (inc. PHP)
+ Reliability
+ Green Cred. (not as much as Id like, but a start. Blue square clearly recognize that their servers have a big Co2 footprint and try to offset it).
+ Price

I’m very happy and just hope that I never have to change.

I have another article of a similar ilk to this on our site (poplewebdesign.co.uk/web-articles/21-ukbased-hosting).

So check out Xilo.net (we hold them in high regard).
Tom Bailey
Pople Web Design.

Also, it seems that only Google and Amazon can get the grid/cluster/cloud concept working properly. I tried cluster-based hosting earlier this year – el cheapo Servage – it was hideously unreliable.

Single server based shared hosting can work really well but you have to find a good provider, otherwise it can be a total lottery.

If my traffic increases significantly next year I’ll consider moving to Media Temple, although I have seen several designers (Jeffrey Zeldman, Jason Santa Maria and Shaun Inman to name three) complaining about MT downtime on Twitter recently.