Business Broadband / Static IP

[Paul2412 10]

After paying for sub standard hosting for a couple of years, I've come to the conclusion that the spec of my PC server at home coupled with my location (city centre) to the exchange it would be cheaper to host customer websites at home.

 

Can anyone recommend an ISP that is either designed for small businesses or any ISP that gives you a static IP and isn't against the T&C to host websites.

 

I've had a look at Plus NET and Opal. Opal looks very good, but I'm concerned that it is part of Talk Talk.

 

Does anyone have any experience?

[Ivor&Mel 10]

Depends on how much you want to pay, and how much you value professionalism in an ISP. You might want to have a look at Andrews & Arnold. The guy that runs this company knows what he's doing, knows what his customers want, and is a constant thorn in the backside of BT (see here for an idea of what I mean).

[Paul2412 10]

That place looks really expensive for a reasonable amount of bandwidth. I'm currently with SKY, and the reliability is fine as is the speed but there are certain reasons I can't host websites with them (example being you can't send email directly through them unless it is the SKY email account).

[Ivor&Mel 10]

As I said, depends on how much you want to pay I mentioned them because I've been with them since April, and I've been amazed at the service they provide - although I'm home broadband, not business. Yes, I imagine they're expensive for a small business, but excellence doesn't come cheap in this country.

[Paul2412 10]

As I said, depends on how much you want to pay I mentioned them because I've been with them since April, and I've been amazed at the service they provide - although I'm home broadband, not business. Yes, I imagine they're expensive for a small business, but excellence doesn't come cheap in this country.

 

What is the difference between the service though? Most ISP's provide 99% uptime. I've been with SKY for 10 months and I've never had an interruption. To get an identical service with that website, I'd have to pay 20 times more per month.

 

I appreciate that there might be more to it than that, but it seems like they are overcharging quite considerably.

[fnkysknky 10]

How much traffic do these sites get? ADSL has very limited upload and isn't a good choice for hosting business websites on....

[DaFoot 10]

I appreciate that there might be more to it than that...

OP is talking about running a site from home so (aside the risk associated with machine dying / lack of redundancy) he would need a static IP address so his domain(s) can be properly routed to his machine and would need a good upload speed.

 

The upload speed is particularly relevant as even if you buy a static IP from a consumer provider the upload speed will still be low. Connectivity provided for folks looking to host sites should provide decent up speed (ie speed to be able to send data from machine in OPs house out to the web).

[HotPhil 10]

When I was with Zen they used to give up to 8 static IPs with their broadband. Not sure if they still do. Would still be with them if BT weren't so incompetent in running the line ISPs have to use.

Other than that, you may be surprised how dynamic your IP actually is - I had an ISP with dynamic IP for 4 years and it never once changed. You can host a website on a dynamic IP, just need to use a dynamic DNS provider like dyndns.org.

[Paul2412 10]

When I was with Zen they used to give up to 8 static IPs with their broadband. Not sure if they still do. Would still be with them if BT weren't so incompetent in running the line ISPs have to use.

Other than that, you may be surprised how dynamic your IP actually is - I had an ISP with dynamic IP for 4 years and it never once changed. You can host a website on a dynamic IP, just need to use a dynamic DNS provider like dyndns.org.

 

My dynamic IP only changes once every couple of months, but sky being sky they have a restriction on that you can't send email out directly from your PC unless it is from your sky account. If you do, the email is picked up as spam by just about every other ISP because it detects that its come from a sky account.

 

The websites monthly traffic is no more than 10GB.

[anywebsite 10]

Try ask4, I think they can provide proper connections in the city centre. You shouldn't attempt to host any serious websites on adsl.

 

Is there any reason you dont want proper web hosting? Why not just pay your money to a proper web host that can provide a better service? It'll cause much less trouble. If you want more control over it then have your own dedicated server co-located at a hosting facility.

[anywebsite 10]

My dynamic IP only changes once every couple of months, but sky being sky they have a restriction on that you can't send email out directly from your PC unless it is from your sky account. If you do, the email is picked up as spam by just about every other ISP because it detects that its come from a sky account.

 

The websites monthly traffic is no more than 10GB.

 

It isn't just Sky that has that email restriction. If you try to host an email server on any residential ADSL ISP, you'll have the same problem. All their IP ranges are in blacklists, because residential connections are often hacked & turned into spam relays. Your emails will be silently dropped by most servers.

 

If it's just for 1 website with 10gb/month traffic, you could get a decent shared hosting package for £50/year or less & not have to worry about it.

[Paul2412 10]

It isn't just Sky that has that email restriction. If you try to host an email server on any residential ADSL ISP, you'll have the same problem. All their IP ranges are in blacklists, because residential connections are often hacked & turned into spam relays. Your emails will be silently dropped by most servers.

 

If it's just for 1 website with 10gb/month traffic, you could get a decent shared hosting package for £50/year or less & not have to worry about it.

 

OK thanks, I thought it was just SKY. I have many websites that my clients pay me to host. The issue I have at the minute is that I pay £10 a month for broadband and nearly £60 a month for hosting, totalling £70 per month.

 

If I install a business broadband connection (£15 from Opal) I can cancel the hosting and host them on a PC I have that has 8GB of RAM which would improve the speed of the client sites.

 

The only downfall I see with bringing it in house is that if something goes wrong whilst I'm out I can't do anything about it. But, saying that if something goes wrong now I'll have to be at home communicating with the hosts.

 

Hosting companies, unless you are paying > £100 per month don't give a toss about your websites and reliability is never 99%.

 

Plus, if I brought it in house I can perform updates and changes to the OS without bothering anyone.