20 Best UK Hosting Providers
Having internet access with a painfully slow connection can mean the kiss of death for a business, a nuance for a University student, and a punishment to misbehaving kids.
A country without a reliable internet connection backed by a sophisticated digital infrastructure can also spell trouble for anyone using a hosting a provider within that area.
Latency across the board, power outages, and server issues are all common problems faced by web hosting providers who are forced to cope with a less-than-optimal internet backbone.
Uk Internet Infrastructure
The United Kingdom has played a major role in helping develop and cultivate the internet since its inception. This isn’t too surprising considering the UK has one of the most developed and extensive infrastructure systems in the world.
Throughout the early 1990’s, broadband internet access was first provided by regional cable television and telephone companies. The national broadband market is overseen by UK government watchdog Ofcom.
The United Kingdom’s internet runs on a mixture of underground and undersea copper cables, microwave relay systems, and fiber-optic cables.
The good? Britain is one the most well-connected countries in the European Union when it comes to standard, superfast, and mobile broadband coverage. The bad news? Like many European countries, the quality of your internet depends almost entirely on where you’re located.
You can expect blazing fast connections throughout London and its hinterland, Manchester, as well as other major cities. People located in England’s valleys, however, are not so lucky. Even villages in West Yorkshire are known to offer fast connections to half its residents while neighbors are forced to cope with super-slow internet access.
Like other European nations, the United Kingdom’s digital infrastructure – while effective – is still a work in process. Luckily, the country is headed in a positive direction.
In November 2016, Chancellor Philip Hammond announced that a new investment fund of £400 million would be used to help aid fiber-optic broadband providers looking to expand their services. An additional £740 million will be allocated to aid the development of a 5G fiber-optic network, though there has not been a date set for the launch of 5G services in the UK.
This haste towards a stronger fiber-optic backbone is largely due to the fact that only 2% of UK residents have full fiber connections. UK’s full fiber connections are known to have download speeds of up to 1 Gbps, which is an astounding 35 times faster than the average UK internet speed of 28.9 Mbps, according to Ofcom.
In addition, 12 million UK homes are expected to have broadband speeds of over 300 Mbps by 2020, a result of the £6 billion investment package through the Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund. Virgin Media also announced its plans to invest £3 billion to improve their own UK fiber-optic network in an effort to increase their reach from 13 million to 17 million homes.
Uk Internet Speeds
According to the 2015 Q1 State of the Internet report released by Akamai, the United Kingdom had an average internet download speed of 10.8 Mbps, at the time giving them a world ranking of 18th. While this average speed is well above the global average of 4.5 Mbps, it’s still relatively low, and puts Britain behind countries like Latvia, Denmark, and Romania.
Luckily, the UK’s overall internet speeds are improving. According to Akamai’s 2016 Q2 report, the average download speed is now 15 Mbps, versus a global average of 6.1 Mbps. But unfortunately, the UK’s average download speed world ranking stands at 20th. Subsequently, the UK’s peak download speed was 61 Mbps.
There’s not much of a noticeable difference between the United Kingdom and United States’ internet in terms of network infrastructure and internet speeds.
But, if you’re starting a website targeted at United Kingdom or European consumers, go with a high-quality United Kingdom hosting provider. If you target a European audience and rely on a USA web host, you’re bound to run into latency issues, which can have a profoundly negative impact on the customer’s user experience.
Best UK Hosting Companies
We went and examined all the major UK hosting providers to find who offers the best services at the best prices. We looked at elements such as infrastructure, hardware, network reliability, hosting features, support, customer reviews, usability, and prices.
This comprehensive list includes large corporate providers and small independent web hosts, with no biases attached. All providers maintain servers in the United Kingdom. Here’s our list of the top 20 best UK hosting companies.
