Where should you host your website?
An independent directory of 20 UK hosting companies and 29 major international providers — compared on price, data centre location, backups, support and what happens at renewal. Plus practical guides to self-hosting WordPress.
Start with your situation
Most hosting mistakes come from buying the wrong category, not the wrong company.
UK small business site
You want a fast, UK-hosted brochure or lead-generation site and someone British to email when it breaks.
WordPress, managed for me
You use WordPress and would rather pay someone to own updates, backups, caching and security.
I want to self-host
You are comfortable in a terminal and want a £4/month VPS that outruns most shared hosting.
No technical skills at all
You want a site live this week with drag-and-drop and no server to think about — accepting the lock-in.
An online shop
Selling is the main purpose of the site, and carts and checkouts cannot be cached.
As cheap as possible
Free tiers, static hosting and the honest cost of the £1.99 deals.
UK hosting companies
British companies, or providers with a UK data centre you can select at signup. Sorted by our rating.
Krystal Hosting
London, England · est. 2002
UK businesses and agencies that want fast, ethically-run hosting with genuinely good support.
Mythic Beasts
Cambridge, England · est. 2000
Developers and sysadmins who want IPv6-native UK VPS run by people who read the RFCs.
Hyve Managed Hosting
Brighton, England · est. 2001
Regulated or high-traffic UK businesses needing managed private cloud with a real SLA.
20i
Wakefield, England · est. 2016
Resellers, web designers and agencies managing many client sites from one panel.
Clook Internet
Blackburn, England · est. 2001
Agencies wanting hands-on managed UK hosting with a named account contact.
34SP.com
Manchester, England · est. 1998
People who want a small, human, Manchester-based host with strong WordPress knowledge.
The big international names
GoDaddy, Namecheap, Wix, WP Engine, WordPress.com and the rest — what they are actually good at, and where they cost you.
Kinsta
Los Angeles, USA · est. 2013
Performance-critical WordPress sites wanting the best available managed platform and support.
Hetzner
Gunzenhausen, Germany · est. 1997
Self-hosting WordPress or anything else on a cheap, fast, unmanaged Linux VPS.
Cloudways
Valletta, Malta · est. 2011
The middle ground: VPS performance and a London region, without doing your own server administration.
SiteGround
Sofia, Bulgaria / Madrid, Spain · est. 2004
WordPress sites that need reliable performance and excellent support without managing a server.
DigitalOcean
New York, USA · est. 2011
Developers self-hosting with a London region, good docs and predictable flat pricing.
WP Engine
Austin, Texas, USA · est. 2010
Agencies and businesses running WordPress where uptime, staging workflow and expert WP support matter more than price.
Hostinger
Kaunas, Lithuania · est. 2004
Lowest realistic cost per month for a decent WordPress site, if you can pay 2-4 years up front.
From the blog
Who owns which host, what the renewal really costs, and where the marketing parts company with the invoice.
Who actually owns your web host?
6 September 2026
Four companies control a startling proportion of the hosting brands you have heard of. Here is the ownership map, and why it shows up in your support tickets.
The renewal price trap, with actual numbers
4 September 2026
What ten popular hosts really cost over three years once the introductory discount expires — and why the cheapest advert is often the most expensive plan.
Krystal vs 20i vs 34SP: choosing between the UK independents
2 September 2026
Three genuinely good British hosts that suit three different people. A head-to-head on price, panel, performance and who each is really built for.
GoDaddy, assessed honestly
30 August 2026
It is fashionable to sneer at GoDaddy. Some of that is deserved and some of it is snobbery — here is which is which, and when it is genuinely the right choice.
WP Engine vs Kinsta: where the premium actually goes
27 August 2026
Two managed WordPress hosts at three to five times the price of shared hosting. What you get for it, where each wins, and the cheaper options that get most of the way.
The Wix question: is lock-in a dealbreaker?
24 August 2026
Wix genuinely builds a good website quickly. It also has no export function, ever. How much that matters depends on a question about your future you should answer deliberately.
Guides
Including the full walkthrough for self-hosting WordPress.org on your own server.
WordPress.com vs WordPress.org: which one do you actually need?
The single most confusing question in web hosting, settled in one page: the software, the company, the plans, and the point at which you should self-host.
Self-hosting WordPress on your own VPS: a complete walkthrough
Ubuntu 24.04, nginx, PHP-FPM 8.3, MariaDB, Let's Encrypt, firewall, automatic backups and updates — from a bare £4/month server to a hardened WordPress site.
Installing WordPress on shared hosting in ten minutes
The normal way most people should self-host: one-click installers, the manual five-minute install, and the six settings to change immediately afterwards.
How to choose a UK web host without regretting it
What actually matters — data centre location, renewal pricing, backups, support hours, VAT and exit routes — and the marketing claims you can safely ignore.