Hosting advice for small business?

GeezerButler · 13 Jan 2014 at 15:01

Guys,

My partner is about to leave her current job and wants to set up her own business doing HR contract work. It will just be her working mostly from home.

Can anyone advise about hosting for this? She is used to Outlook / Exchange and a Blackberry. Not a huge requirement for web site hosting yet, and not a big requirement for cloud storage - maybe later in the year. She really just wants to be able to use Outlook 2013 and a Blackberry for her mail with some expansion possibilities for web and cloud.

Can anyone recommend a good hosting company for this in the UK?

Also, if she gets another Blackberry can it pick up push email from Exchange or is a Blackberry service required?

Any recommendations would be great - cheers everyone

mattyg · 13 Jan 2014 at 15:03

Ive uses Vidahost for a number of years with ZERO issues

https://www.vidahost.com/

Terrier_Jimlad · 13 Jan 2014 at 15:10

Yup, definitely use VidaHost or TSO Host (both owned by Paragon)

Use the discount code JUSTASK for 20% off your first domain/hosting package at VidaHost (this is not my personal affliate code before anyone else moans)

swinnie · 13 Jan 2014 at 15:20

TSOHost or Vidahost for web hosting/domain registration.

I'm unsure about the BlackBerry Requirement with Exchange, I'd hope it would work in a similar fashion to the Android/iOS configuration.

You can get Hosted Exchange from a number of providers, including TSOHost. However, people like Simply Mail Solutions are much cheaper.

I've got around a dozen customers using hosted exchange via Simply Mail Solutions and it works very well.

bigredshark · 13 Jan 2014 at 15:35

Office365 is alarmingly hard to beat in the 'works' and 'reasonably priced' stakes if you want the Outlook / OWA corporate experience replicated for a single user (or a small team actually).

Other advantages include the fact that hosted exchange is really quite hard to do reliably and well at a sane price point, if anybody is going to pull it off you'd probably bet on Microsoft...

GeezerButler · 13 Jan 2014 at 17:48

Thanks for the advice guys - really appreciate the help. Cheers

visibleman · 13 Jan 2014 at 22:28

Domain name, Tsohost/Vidahost/1&1 (1&1 have an awful control panel but they use to be about the cheapest for .uk domains).

For hosted exchange then use Office 365 'Exchange Online' plan which is £2.60 p/m (ex. VAT), i can't recommend it enough and it's what i've switched most of my SME clients to - extremely easy to setup (should just be a case of adding an Exchange account on the BB device) and about/is the cheapest you'll find.

Caged · 14 Jan 2014 at 00:15

bigredshark said:
Office365 is alarmingly hard to beat in the 'works' and 'reasonably priced' stakes if you want the Outlook / OWA corporate experience replicated for a single user (or a small team actually).

Other advantages include the fact that hosted exchange is really quite hard to do reliably and well at a sane price point, if anybody is going to pull it off you'd probably bet on Microsoft...

Seconding this. I wouldn't consider email hosted by anything other than Google Apps or Microsoft's offering. And if your other half wants Outlook then Exchange Online is the one to go for. Or Office 365 if she could make use of the extras.

If she's on BlackBerry OS7 then she will need to get email through BIS which is done by pointing it at your Outlook Web Access URL. If it's BB OS 10 then it uses ActiveSync.

Deleted member 138126 · 14 Jan 2014 at 17:27

Office 365.

Also, with web hosting, don't buy the domain name at the same time as you buy the hosting, as a few of the UK hosting companies buy the domain name "on your behalf" and make it incredibly difficult to take the domain name with you if/when you want to leave.

bluebox · 14 Jan 2014 at 21:25

As well as hosted Exchange and SharePoint (re-branded as SkyDrive Pro), Office365 includes webhosting so all you'd need to add is a domain name.

Terrier_Jimlad · 14 Jan 2014 at 21:36

rotor said:
Office 365.

Also, with web hosting, don't buy the domain name at the same time as you buy the hosting, as a few of the UK hosting companies buy the domain name "on your behalf" and make it incredibly difficult to take the domain name with you if/when you want to leave.

Nominet clamped down on that last year and are now very strict on it ... you should get no domain transfer away issues from any UK registered web hosting company or they get heavily fined.

bigredshark · 14 Jan 2014 at 23:34

Terrier_Jimlad said:
Nominet clamped down on that last year and are now very strict on it ... you should get no domain transfer away issues from any UK registered web hosting company or they get heavily fined.

only for a .uk, nominet have absolutely zero jurisdiction outside of the uk namespace (thank god)

Deleted member 138126 · 16 Jan 2014 at 14:48

Terrier_Jimlad said:
Nominet clamped down on that last year and are now very strict on it ... you should get no domain transfer away issues from any UK registered web hosting company or they get heavily fined.

Good to know!

daz · 17 Jan 2014 at 04:40

Office365 and Google Apps are very hard to beat price/feature wise - they are fantastic for getting off the ground as email solutions go. The only downside with them is that you can't talk to someone if you have a problem.

Also, with web hosting, don't buy the domain name at the same time as you buy the hosting, as a few of the UK hosting companies buy the domain name "on your behalf" and make it incredibly difficult to take the domain name with you if/when you want to leave.

That used to be quite prevalent years ago, but is not really the case these days. Check to see if there are any transfer away fees though.

Caged · 18 Jan 2014 at 02:35

I can definitely phone someone about Google Apps

Hosting advice for small business?

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