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Web hosting at it's best, 5quidhost is a lot more professional than the name suggests. If you're looking to build a website, or paying over the odds for a mediocre hosting package, then 5quidhost is an excellent hosting company.
5quidhost has a number of hosting packages, including a free one! They offer most of the standard components, such as PHP, MySQL, SSL, POP3 email, and webmail among others. Now none of this means much to most people until you really get into web design, but it is similar to the other hosting services out there.
One of the big advantages of 5quidhost is that they don't limit the number of features you can have, so you can theoretically have an unlimited number of MySQL databases, and an unlimited number of email addresses. Subdomains and FTP accounts are also unlimited. Although I do believe their claims that these features are unlimited, only 10,000 appear in the control panel. Now I guess that they wouldn't think that anyone would want more than 10,000 MySQL databases, or more than 10,000 email accounts, this is only because of a fault when they intially set up the packages, MySQL databases and email accounts are indeed unlimited!
The only significant feature I can see that doesn't appear in their hosting is ASP, which is another scripting language similar to PHP. 5quidhost will make arrangements to host a Windows server (ASP requires Windows) if you had a need for ASP.
Again, trumpeting the value of open source software, I feel 5quidhost is an ideal solution as they use LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) on their servers. LAMP is an open source bundle of these four components, which combine to provide a feature-filled webserver. The other main advantage of using LAMP is that it is a free solution for the hosts, which brings down the cost for the end user.
The first thing that made me aware of 5quidhost was their compatibility with Joomla!. They have the option to automatically install Joomla! when you sign up, and even if you don't initially they will guide you through the installation or even do it for you. (I am planning on writing a review of Joomla! sometime soon.)
The next thing that stood out in their hosting packages was the price! They offer a totally free package, albeit with very little disk space and bandwidth. There is also a package that costs £5 a year, this doesn't have PHP configured or any MySQL databases, which does mean that Joomla! won't run. This package is intended for beginner, family use, hence the name "Personal". The rest of their packages go up in price as they go up in bandwidth/disk space.
| Summary of 5quidhost's hosting packages (all other features are unlimited unless stated) | | Level
| 0 | "Personal" | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | | Disk Space | 20MB | 50MB | 125MB | 2000MB (~2GB) | 3500MB (~3.5GB) | 5000MB (~5GB) | | Bandwidth
| 200MB p/month | 500MB p/month | 2GB p/month | 20GB p/month | 35GB p/month | 50GB p/month | | Cost
| Free | £5 p/year | £2 p/month | £5 p/month | £8.50 p/month | £11 p/month | | Notes
| One mailing list One MySQL database | One mailing list No MySQL databases |
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| If your bandwidth or disk space needs increase at any time they can upgrade you to a higher package without any downtime or interruptions, they have a good system of calculating your new payments based on what you have already paid. Also If you ever needed more than level 4 provides, they would be able to cater for your needs, although it will cost a lot more due to hardware limitations. One thing you will need when signing up to one of the hosting packages is a domain name. 5quidhost does not currently sell domain names, so you will have to purchase a domain from elsewhere. This does allow you to shop around for a cheap domain name deal.
The best part of using 5quidhost for my site is their customer service. They use an email system rather than phone lines, but their replies are very prompt. When I initially started thinking about using their service, I had a few questions, I received answers no longer then five minutes after I emailed them. They use an informal style of writing, and made me feel very relaxed with the whole process. During the writing of this review I had some questions, they were a great help with this as well going into detail on a number of things. They even replied on a Sunday!
There is no minimum contract, but if you pay for a year in advance there is a reduction equal to one month's free hosting. At the end of your billing period, they email you with the details of the next payment. Unfortunately 5quidhost web hosting is not available to people outside of the UK.
I would thoroughly recommend 5quidhost to anyone who wishes to receive web hosting.
I am not associated or paid in anyway by 5quidhost | 
