Zen, Fasthosts or other? (PHP+MySQL)

So, i'm doing a little pet project for myself and I'm wanting business hosting.

I've been looking at zens offering: http://www.zen.co.uk/business/hosting-and-domains/we...

And fasthosts offering: http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/hosting/

At this point I've no idea of monthly bandwidth usage, the site I'm coding up is ebay'ish in nature. So it allows users to post auctions and images. So I suspect over time storage space will be important.

I'm edging towards fasthosts at the moment, and if I hit the storage limits I can always switch to using amazon s3 for image storage.

Are there any others besides zen and fasthosts that are recommended?

I would avoid Fasthosts (whom I have used in the past). Do a bit of research on the web and you'll see why. Personally I use tsohost but they are not business sites, having said that I see no reason why they should not meet your requirements. Others here will also recommend nethosted.

How busy do you expect it to get?

I've always used Dream-Hosting and they've been great. Have an "ultimate" package for 80 quid a year that would likely give you plenty of scope to get started. http://www.dream-hosting.co.uk/

Fasthosts are just not in the same league as Zen. (been there, done that, threw the T shirt away ages ago)

As kasg said, Nethosted is often recommended here and is well worth a look.

In reply to a post by Sandgrounder:

Fasthosts are just not in the same league as Zen. (been there, done that, threw the T shirt away ages ago)

As kasg said, Nethosted is often recommended here and is well worth a look.

Another vote for Nethosted. Support excellent - 24/7

I would also vote for nethosted, you can grab the adslguide / thinkbroadband special £50 per year

Edited by deleted (Mon 28-Mar-11 12:36:02)

Tsohost's pro package is also £50 a year, which seems to be significantly cheaper than Nethosted's equivalent. You might be able to get 10% off using discount code TENPERCENT, I'm not sure whether this still works. I have found their support to be excellent, always responding within a few minutes.

One quick suggestion, whichever web host you choose, make sure you ask them for atleast 99.95% guaranteed network uptime SLA and 24/7 technical support. These two things are necessary for the price you pay for the web hosting services.

I can think of some scenarios where a rigorous uptime and support regime are essential - I'm not sure many UK businesses actually meet those scenarios though.