OC(UK) Host Review :-)

Soldato
Joined
28 Aug 2006
Posts
3,003
I'm looking at new hosting. Currently with TSOHost.

I'm looking for some not expensive reliable hybrid hosting. Or, linux hosting that supports .Net Core 1.x & 2.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Jan 2006
Posts
3,091
Location
Norwich
What a joke:
Code:
Thank you for contacting us on the matter.

It looks like you have triggered our security system's blacklist preventing measures. Your mail traffic has been routed through a mail server with low reputation, which is also listed on a few RBLs.

This is the reason for your message to bounce back. You have triggered the security mechanism by authenticating with our platform using a blacklisted local IP. Meaning the IP your Internet Service Provider assigned to your home/local network appears on an RBL.

You can check that by visiting - http://ip.me.uk - to get your local IP, then you can paste it here - https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx - which will show you where it appears.

In such cases you have two options, to ask your Internet Provider to assign a clean IP to your home location or request delisting. Or to use the webmail application on "webmail.gridhost.co.uk", which will route your traffic through a mail server with good reputation. Let me know if you require any further assistance.

Kind regards, Paul Petrov Technical Support Paragon Internet Group

Contact Vidahost to say that emails to Live and Apple are bouncing, and we get back the above. (Had moved some non-critical personal stuff already stuff, but the business stuff was easier just to leave alone)

Avoid like the plague, everything will now be moving away at the earliest possible opportunity.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
31 Jan 2004
Posts
16,335
Location
Plymouth
What's the IP and what blacklists? It's entirely possible your home system is sending spam for example. Or....the IP is listed on the PBL and you're not using SMTP authentication. Or it's someone else on the same mailserver.

Spam was always a massive headache for me to keep on top of...
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Jan 2006
Posts
3,091
Location
Norwich
Its running a single address through Gmail using the send as function (IIRC this just connects via SMTP, although I'd have to check that one & the specific IP Gmail is dialling in with) with authentication enabled & with full SPF on the domain.

outmx-008.london.gridhost.co.uk is the address for the mailserver (95.142.156.62), and as far as I can tell, it's on various of the honeytrap lists (Spamhaus and a couple of others IIRC) plus the Apple & Live lists judging by the bounceback messages coming through over the last few days.

Best I can guess is that it's someone on the same mailserver, reasonably certain its not us.
Support's answer from above and a followup message under the same ticket seems to essentially be that its entirely our fault, and that we should use the webmail to get messages to Live etc...

AFAIK you're not really involved any more in the business side of things?
I'm well aware spam is a massive issue, so don't put yourself out too much, just getting a tad frustrated with the way things have ended up :)
 
Man of Honour
Joined
31 Jan 2004
Posts
16,335
Location
Plymouth
Paragon sold to HEG in late 2015 and in April this year Godaddy bought HEG. I left Nov 2016. So I don't have anything to do with the company anymore although last time I visited the office I was mobbed and told to come back by my old team, :( Well some of them anyway :p

If you're using Gmail I'd let it handle your mail too tbh, I always recommended people keep things simple because there's fewer mailservers to go through to work out a problem. I guess the Gmail server itself sent some spam hence them getting the 'bad server' selected when they connect to the gridhost system, but maybe gmail's relay servers could also be whitelisted and sent via something else.
 
Associate
Joined
26 Jun 2005
Posts
1,487
I've got a few simple Wordpress sites in Vidahost's Cloud platform. They're slooow and from reading the posts above I'm convinced now to move. Looking at Krystal and Siteground curently. Any preference of the two? Thanks
 
Soldato
Joined
16 Jun 2013
Posts
5,381
I want to move to Krystal but I am confused by the entry processes limit of 10(if I don't want to pay more than Vida). It seems Vida limit usage by bandwidth rather than concurrent users.

The site gets ~2000 unique visitors a day while it's just a static page there's also analytics scripts running in the background for the software which have ~11,000 calls. The static page should be easy enough but the analytics writing to a database will probably lock up 10 entry processes constantly.

There's also a charity site being run on the same account which will add some traffic.

Anyone got more of a clue than me on this?
 
Man of Honour
Joined
31 Jan 2004
Posts
16,335
Location
Plymouth
If you don't have big traffic peaks and the scripts are efficient then 10 should be alright.....otherwise may be a bit low. You can probably improve anything slow by working out what's slowest and improving it.

Which er isn't terribly useful but...most scripts run for a fraction of a second so....assuming no huge peaks I'd be surprised if you had an issue. But I've seen more or less everything....
 
Soldato
Joined
16 Jun 2013
Posts
5,381
If you don't have big traffic peaks and the scripts are efficient then 10 should be alright.....otherwise may be a bit low. You can probably improve anything slow by working out what's slowest and improving it.

Which er isn't terribly useful but...most scripts run for a fraction of a second so....assuming no huge peaks I'd be surprised if you had an issue. But I've seen more or less everything....
Brilliant I'll give it a go.

Guess I could try and simulate the Reddit hug of death I get every so often see if it locks some out before I make the switch.

Thank you :).
 
Soldato
Joined
13 Jan 2010
Posts
6,354
Location
Manchester
wondering if you guys could help me out a little.

im a gardener and im going to make a website (total noob btw) im only wanting a basic site and not likely to get loads of traffic.

https://www.tsohost.com/ seems to get good reviews for domain names?
https://sites.google.com/?pli=1 for building and hosting? Is it to basic?

are them sites a good starter or is there better ones? cheers
 
Last edited:
Associate
Joined
30 Nov 2003
Posts
1,569
wondering if you guys could help me out a little.

im a gardener and im going to make a website (total noob btw) im only wanting a basic site and not likely to get loads of traffic.

https://www.tsohost.com/ seems to get good reviews for domain names?
https://sites.google.com/?pli=1 for building and hosting? Is it to basic?

are them sites a good starter or is there better ones? cheers

I've started to use Google domains for registering.

Google sites might do what you want. Suppose it depends if it fits your needs.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
1 Nov 2007
Posts
4,403
Location
Christchurch UK
I used to use Dotster years back as US based hosting used to be cheap, then moved to Vidahost. Vidahosts service has got worse and worse though in last year... all my sites would go down many times a day with a uptime reported by statuscake of under 90%... they would blame it on things like 'a table crashed' blah blah, or 'your MySQL password changed' (yeah right). The final nail in the coffin was when sites were down a whole afternoon and also my shared IP was flagged as a spammer by GMAIL. I couldn't contact them by phone, they didn't reply to my ticket... and only after 20mins on 'hold' with online chat did they reply.

So on friday I moved to Krystal, 5 active WP sites.... also moved all my domains spread across Dotster and Vidahost to Google Domains (under the assumption if you can't trust google who can you trust... and maybe, just maybe, there is some algorithm to like Google registered domains in Google search more lol)

Anyway, very happy with speed so far... got my main site up to 85 mob / 85 desktop on Google page insights. Also loving the lets encrypt built into CP, one click SSL ftw. Krystal themselves reply to chat / tickets straight away and are very helpful.
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
2,990
MY first major problem with Vidahost today.
https://help.vidahost.com/status/report/7207
Server died, but has been restored...apparently.

Currently, I've got emails not coming in, but when I look at my IMAP mailboxes, the emails have gone back to 2015!!! :(
How old was that backup :(
If they dig out of this hole, remind me to backup my companies email accounts seperately. Crossing fingers I've not lost 3 years of company email right now.
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Mar 2008
Posts
10,078
Location
Stoke area
I've moved over to Krystal but haven't had chance to even touch it yes and it's been 3 months. Need to get me wedding photography site finished and uploaded, and how to change from monthly to annually payment, it's driving me crazy each month having to refresh it :D

I can't complain about the setup process though, very easy and fast, had to use their support once and had a response within 10 mins. This was how Vidahost used to be.
 
Soldato
Joined
6 Mar 2008
Posts
10,078
Location
Stoke area
wondering if you guys could help me out a little.

im a gardener and im going to make a website (total noob btw) im only wanting a basic site and not likely to get loads of traffic.

https://www.tsohost.com/ seems to get good reviews for domain names?
https://sites.google.com/?pli=1 for building and hosting? Is it to basic?

are them sites a good starter or is there better ones? cheers

If you need a hand with the site/seo/social media let me know :)
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
2,990
For what it's worth, having had ANOTHER issue with Vidahost, now Tsohost, I've moved to Krystal.

Can't comment about reliability yet, too early, but their online chat support is much quicker than tsohost responding to me.

Once I've finished moving all my domains, I'll attempt to get Tsohost to delete all my data, which could be interesting as a lot of the problems stem from when they moved me into a new server in 2015. Ever since then, problems occur whereby the old server from 2015, still with all my data on (for some reason), rears it's ugly head. Oh look, all my email has suddenly reverted to 2015....Ah, they've pointed my domains back to the old server AGAIN.....
They don't seem to be able to manage things very well.
 
Associate
Joined
18 Aug 2011
Posts
1,072
Location
Peterborough
I was with Vidahost and TSO Host prior to them becoming one and the same, I sent a support ticket today and I was sent a document of how to fix the problem myself, not quite what I expected.

I have 5 domain names, 4 have Lets Encrypt, the other has a paid for SSL Certificate via TSO Host, my Lets Encrypt ones have had numerous issues and problems, I am not sure if it is down to Lets Encrypt being "free" or the host..

Anyway, it's time to change hosts, I like the look and reviews of Krystal Hosting but they use Lets Encrypt, I have asked if they have a paid for version and they do but only an EV costing too much and far more than I need £170+ VAT

So any other suggestions of decent hosts with the option to upgrade to an SSL better than Lets Encrypt?

Why am I anal about the SSL - I only collect email and address details (I provide a man and a van service) and I have spent decent money having my site made mobile friendly, speeded up and it has a paid for SSL and all these things added together has given me an awful lot of Google love.
 
Associate
Joined
7 Sep 2018
Posts
1
wondering if you guys could help me out a little.

im a gardener and im going to make a website (total noob btw) im only wanting a basic site and not likely to get loads of traffic.

https://www.tsohost.com/ seems to get good reviews for domain names?
https://sites.google.com/?pli=1 for building and hosting? Is it to basic?

What about hostgator here?are them sites a good starter or is there better ones? cheers

Yeah, just be careful I always search them on Google and see and read multiple reviews. That way you get a better idea if the company is good or not.
 
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