Best web hosting in the UK: how to choose

What separates hosts

• The renewal price, not the introductory one. Many hosts are cheap for the first term and much more after.
• Server location and whether a content network sits in front of the site. It decides how fast your visitors see it.
• Backups: how often, how long they are kept, and whether you can restore them yourself.
• Support: hours, channels and speed of reply. A support ticket answered in two days is no help when the site is down.
• What the plan limits: storage, traffic, number of sites, email accounts and databases.
• Whether you can leave: exporting your site and domain without a fee.

Hosting in the UK

• If your audience is in the UK, a host with UK or nearby European servers gives lower delay than one in another continent.
• UK GDPR applies if you handle visitors' personal data, so check where a host stores data and whether it gives you a data processing agreement.
• Cheap introductory prices usually rise at renewal. Compare the renewal price and how the host handles backups.

Match the plan to the site

• A small brochure site or blog: shared hosting or a site-builder is usually enough.
• A shop or an app: choose a plan that gives you backups, a staging copy and room to grow.
• A static site or front-end project: a static hosting service with a content network is often cheaper and faster than traditional hosting.

Compare your shortlist

Name two or three hosts in compare⁄io and say what you are building — "a WordPress shop for customers in the UK" — and it researches each with a live web search and shows where the facts came from. For scoring them yourself, use the weighted decision matrix; for how to compare anything that is not in a catalogue, see how to compare anything.