More about Hosting

Prices	southwestuk.com's pricing is set to be extremely competitive yet we ensure that we make a profit and stay in business. Too many hosts offer the world for ridiculous prices and go out of business in a few months. Go to our Price List.
So-Called 'Free' Accounts	We see many adverts that say 'Free Web Space' and such but, when you click on them, you find it's a miniscule 25MB (or something similar) without any scripting facilities, databases, SSI etc. and you're charged huge overages for exceeding limits. It's a trap to lure you in and force you to upgrade. We don't do that! Our minimum account has 500MB of disk space and 5GB of data transfer and it's fully specified with CGI, PHP, databases, subdomains etc. No catches - just great value. It's a simple matter of economics - you don't get something for nothing!
£0.99 For The World	We've seen these accounts offered too. We believe that they're either a 'lure' like the 'Free' accounts mentioned above, or the company won't be in business for long. We don't do that! We've carried out extensive research and found that we can offer well-specified packages at a realistic cost whilst still making a reasonable profit. That means we'll be here for you tomorrow ... next week ... next year ...
'False' Features	A lot of hosts seem to offer measly feature-sets on packages like "10 POP3 accounts", "1 SQL database and pay £10 if you want more" or "upgrade to our next package if you want auto-responders" (wow!). It's just a money-spinner that's all. We don't do that! You get a full feature set with all our packages. It doesn't cost us anything, so we're not going to 'con' you into a higher package just for some innocuous feature. The only things that really cost us money are bandwidth and disk space, and all our packages are graded with that in mind. You can even add multiple domain names so that you get good search engine coverage.
The Data Centre Cover-Up	Many hosts seem to feel it's important to imply that they have their own data centre. This is ludicrous - only the very, very biggest of hosts have their own data centres and it is unlikely that small companies could supply the continuous monitoring, bandwidth and security required for industrial strength services. We don't do that! We leverage value from the facilities provided by the excellent data centres at 'The Planet' in Dallas Texas and 'Redbus Soverign House' in London (2), Paris, Milan and Ansterdam - and we're honest about that. That's how we can offer hosting at such good value.
The False Support Claims	Many hosts are apt to claim 24x7 support, but what do they mean by this? Some claims are just outright lies; some claims mean that you'll get someone at the other end, but it'll just be a help desk operative who can't fix your problem. Some claims - from the very biggest of hosts - will be genuine. We'd bet that most 24x7 support claims aren't genuine though. We don't do that! Our servers are monitored on a 24x7 basis and, whilst we may not be dealing with your emails at midnight, you can still rest assured that if a key service has problems it will be attended to whatever the time. What's more, when you do contact us you're getting a technician, not a help-desk operative.
Uptime Claims	A lot of hosting companies claim 'five nines' (i.e. 99.999%) uptime, then start mentioning 'exclusions' to that figure (often in the fine print). They have to; 99.999% uptime is less than 10 minutes of down time a year. What about scheduled reboots, security upgrades and all the things necessary to keep the server secure? Five nines isn't really five nines as far as the customer is concerned. We don't do that! We aim to keep this above 98%, preferably closer to 99% and you can be damn sure that if it isn't, someone is working hard to find out why. The independent, third party stats from Alertra report 99.196% for 2003 and 99.840% for 2004 at the time of publishing. This is everything, scheduled or not. If there are circumstances 'beyond our control' we'll tell you when that's the case; by the same token we'll admit it if it's our fault.
Phone Support	Many hosts seem to want to isolate themselves from their customers and you simply can't get in touch with them by telephone. We don't do that! We publish a land line and mobile number for support enquiries and you're welcome to ring them. Yes, we'd prefer you to use the e-mail form on our contact page in the first instance, but we understand that there are times when nothing can replace direct contact with a human being via a telephone.
Honesty	Even if you don't choose southwestuk.com as your host, please avoid hosts that advertise 'unlimited' data transfer or 'unlimited' disk space. Nothing's unlimited! This is just a marketing con to draw you in - there will be a limit and you'll find that it will suddenly appear when it suits the host; under the auspices of 'unreasonable server load' or a similar excuse. southwestuk.com strives to be honest in this respect.
Experience	All southwestuk.com's staff have many years of computing experience behind them. When you need support you'll get it from a career computer technician, not a foreign call agency whose job is simply to delay you until someone who really knows what they're doing is available.