Paying for hosting in Euros? EuroVPS for UK hosting?
 

Hi

I am based in the UK, may I ask is the Euro relatively stable from a UK conversion perspective? Basically looking for fairly stable pricing regarding hosting.

Found your review to be very refreshing regarding above company.

TIA
John

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It was regarding Eurovps hosting, I usually purchase hosting in the UK although I have an account at Totalchoicehosting where the price in dollars is competative.

Euro VAT at 23% and payment in Euros leaves me wondering if the price would remain stable?

John

From a currency stance...

The Euro (EUR) is probably fine. You can safely ignore the "sky is falling" Euro boogeyman rhetoric being tossed around on various news/infotainment venues, as caused by ongoing austerity issues in countries like Greece. Plus some inflation of the Euro would not necessarily equate to changes in the currency exchange against GBP, as the GBP would probably be tied to the EUR in some way. At most, assuming UK doesn't match Euro inflation, UK buying power would likely increase over time -- meaning the price for you would go down, due to exchange rates favorable against the British Pound (GBP).

USA users would find themselves in the opposite situation, across long-term use, historically. Rising inflation of the USD actually made prices rise by about 15% over the past 6 years, against a stronger Euro. It's not a desirable loss of value, but it's also not overwhelming. A €29.95 EUR hosting plan was about $35 USD six years ago, but rose to about $39 USD over time. Canadians are largely unaffected, based on my memory of exchange rates going back to 2000; USD and CAD are at parity right now, almost a 1:1 exchange.

In terms of hosting quality...

There's virtually zero advantage of getting a "UK host" over a reasonably close European host, which Amsterdam is (the location of EuroVPS servers). And IP addresses are not always geo-tagged to the proper location anyway. Using a .co.uk (or other UK TLD) domain, and adjusting your settings in Google Webmaster tools to target UK, is all that truly matters.

You'll also find that a number of small/medium "UK hosts" are slowly being bought up by U.S. and Canadian hosting companies. There's no reason -- it's just a recent trend of happenstance that I can see. A lot of USA based hosts are also launching servers/services in UK and European datacenters.

You'll have a hard time topping EuroVPS, for quality of hardware, network and support.

Stablehost, Futurehosting and JaguarPC have UK (London) hosting locations. Those are all USA-based hosts, so understand their content and usage policies will generally reflect U.S. laws and regulations.

I agree with your comments about the Euro Boogeyman rhetoric, hence the reason I am making enquiries.
Hosting your site in the states means you do not pay VAT of any description, but support can be sporadic depending on the time of day in the UK.

I read the reviews on WHT and it was refreshing to find this board and your review of EuroVPS. Frankly as far as reviews are concerned I am sceptical of their content. Many hosts advertise features which they clearly do not have, only when you signup and raise a ticket you realise this.

EuroVPS does look like a decent host, maybe a bit pricey with the Euro VAT at 23% but if you get honesty and integrity included in the package it will be worth paying a bit extra.

Many thanks for your comments
John

Support is a key factor in hosting -- especially when it comes to availability, speed, and depth/quality of their knowledge.

Your monthly hosting bill should match your phone bill. That's my general advice to anybody who uses hosting for business needs or serious hobby needs. Folks will spend $50 for internet access, $50 for a phone plan ... and then try to cheap out with $5 budgeted for hosting? It just doesn't make sense. I do well to spend $5 on lunch, and that's just one meal for one day. Surely a month of quality hosting is worth more than a sandwich with tea?

So budget wisely. :2cents:

Inaccurate information on hosting company websites is a big problem. :mad:

The reason is because a lot of hosts use cheap $15 site templates, as well as steal/plagiarize content from other hosts. Few actually spend money to hire a designer that creates unique sites. Or as a second choice, spend their own time to develop something in-house without using templates.

The EuroVPS site is not one of those template sites.

In fact, the only inaccuracies I've seen on their site to date, in six years of using them, is the occasional broken link. Or slow updates when they make service modifications. For example, Windows VPS plans were upgraded to VMWare last month, and are no longer Virtuozzo. Last I saw, the site still listed Virtuozzo as the underlying VM technology. (And VMWare is much, much better than the paravirtualized "OS isolation" you got from Parallels. The VMWare VPS runs like a dedicated server!)