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email / web host recommendations


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For various reasons it's looking as though my long association with PlusNet will be ending soonish.  The current plan (subject to them getting the physical connection to the house for free as they promised) is FTTP by Gigaclear, who are the only option in the village for that and have a good offer on.  This will dramatically improve connection speeds and, hopefully, reliability.  They will also provide a VOIP service to retain our landline phone whereas PlusNet will not (once analogue switched off).

The downside is that while PlusNet provide an email hosting service and webspace (where my very ancient website lives), Gigaclear do not and PlusNet offer no legacy service/support whatever.

So..... either we can exist on gmail and outlook accounts and forgo any webspace (not a big deal), I am also looking at the possibility of finding a reliable provider who can offer basic hosting services at reasonable cost.  Anyone have any recommendations?

TIA

Nick

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For hosting, I guess it depends how much of a managed service you're after and how cheap. If you are hands on I would say AWS as the industry leader, if not then maybe a UK company like Heart Internet whose cloud offerings will be a wrapper over AWS provided cloud. Heart are a bit expensive now compared to the competition but I think the level of customer support is still pretty decent. For AWS, its infinitely configurable and will beat the pants off everything on cost, but you will probably have to do a lot yourself. I believe they do now offer managed service type offerings for WordPress installs though.

The issue for me with the traditional managed hosting providers is that I don't think they invest much in their offerings. Compared to something like Outlook or Gmail, I think the level of spam protection you are likely to get from their attached email inboxes will be poor.

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  • 2 weeks later...

My thanks to Craig for his advice.

Meanwhile, an irritating hitch. We’ve been waiting two months for connection, which was due today.

Yesterday afternoon I got a text advising this had been cancelled due to “unforeseen circumstances”. I rang them and spent a while on hold. When I did get through I was informed that installation was “impossible because  no ports can be found for the three houses beyond the church (of which we are one) so cannot be connected to the network”. I assured him they were there and we vividly remember the inconvenience of the road being dug up to put the cables in. He seemed doubtful, so I went out there while we were talking and found all three in as many minutes. Pictures were emailed

IMG_4037.jpeg

IMG_4036.jpegand it is now accepted that the ports exist. Got wait another 2 weeks now. 
 

To be fair the guy I spoke to was great and absorbed my grumpiness with patience and good humour. We agreed the advance connections team need to go to Specsavers/get a guide dog….

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  • 2 weeks later...

Today…… two guys turned up and got the job done. FTTP. 150MBs. Could have 400 if I felt like paying more but as we’ve been coping fairly well with 30 it seems unnecessary.

Currently have two systems running as the solar battery absolutely refuses to transfer to the new one. Probably operator error… :wallbash:

So now it’s real (I’ve been seriously doubting it), I actually have to sort alternative email arrangements and try to change all the important ones while the old address is still live. We’ve had it 20 years so scope for inconvenience and irritation is huge. 

 

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17 hours ago, Nick Jones said:

So now it’s real (I’ve been seriously doubting it), I actually have to sort alternative email arrangements and try to change all the important ones while the old address is still live. We’ve had it 20 years so scope for inconvenience and irritation is huge. 

Isn't IT great. I hope your journey on this isn't too trialling..

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At least I’ve sorted the solar battery now. Called the manufacturers Helpdesk and a very helpful man told me how to get behind the app interface (easy) and configure it manually. Old router now stood down and everything seems to be still working. That was the easy part.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Happy to report that things appear to be under "control".

I have two working email addresses, one of which is even the same as one of my old ones (the more or less unknown one) and I've even managed to get my website working again, now hosted by the same folks who host this forum.  Thanks to Craig for the guidance on that.  He nearly got called in again for advice as there's been a fair amount of cussing this afternoon while I learned (re-learned even) the magic spells.

http://shadetreegarage.co.uk/

Yes, it's exactly the same - which is to say hopelessly and shamefully out of date.  The difference is that after this afternoon's trials, I've relearned some of the steps involved, so re-doing it seems like a realistic prospect.  Don't hold your breath though!

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