The recommendation

Segpub

In the following page I will attempt to fully justify my choice of provider.
The web host that I have chosen is: Segment Publishing Pty Limited.

About SegPub

Segment Publishing is a Sydney, Australia-based company who specialise in FreeBSD-powered web hosting. They provide high-quality hosting using FreeBSD-powered servers for maximum stability and security. Their love for open-source software agrees with our company's morals. It's always nice to have like-minded business partners.

Features

According to their website their “hosting is backed by a 99.5% Service Level Agreement,” meaning our site will always have the maximum uptime possible, otherwise we don't have to pay. Their servers are housed in a state of the art data centre with maximum redundancy; that means that we will definitely be able to rely on our site to remain operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

They have custom developed their own control panel (called my.segpub) which allows us to configure our hosting account at any time, day or night. It has been “designed ... to be both powerful and easy to use,” virtually giving us total control.

They also provide 24/7 support using their advanced ticket system, allowing them to accurately track and monitor our requests and resolve them in a timely manner. Their specialised and succinct selection of features left me spellbound! We will have all of the following:

A dedicated IP address.
Our account will come with its own IP address (with Reverse DNS), allowing us to preview our site before our domain is delegated or registered.
SSL SMTP server (smtp.ourdomain).
We will be able to send mail securely using our own outgoing mail server.
Shared SSL Certificate.
Using the shared SSL certificate we be able to provide our customers with secure areas without needing to purchase our own certificate.
SSL/TLS encrypted FTP server.
All FTP sessions will be SSL/TLS encrypted for added security.
SSL POP/IMAP.
Our email servers will support secure SSL connections. This we give us peace of mind when checking our mail.
PHP 5.
PHP is a powerful and popular web-based scripting language.
Perl 5.8.x.
Perl is another powerful scripting language. MovableType is based on Perl.
Python 2.4.x.
Python is another powerful scripting language.
Subversion.
Subversion is a powerful version control system. We include support for SVN via HTTP/HTTPS and SSH.
Ruby On Rails.
Ruby On Rails is a very popular web application framework, written in Ruby. If in the future we want to write any web applications using the fast ruby on rails framework we will be fully supported by SegPub through Lighttpd.

The customer service supplied by SegPub is absolutely phenomenal. Hicksdesign and many others thoroughly recommend them. Especially when delivering Ruby on rails applications. They will give us all the help and advice we need to design and implement one of these apps through Lighttpd.

Scalability and price

Most of what has been mentioned above is standard with most web hosts, but what I was most impressed with was the scalability of their product.

They offer 5 different hosting packages, each one tailored to suit a range of needs, from individual weblogs to large corporate or government sites. Every package comes with generous disk and bandwidth allocations, Urchin web statistics software, plus email virus scanning and spam filtering. This suits our needs perfectly. If our company takes off beyond our wildest dreams we won't need to switch hosts, but just bump up our package to the next level.

Comparison of the packages offered by Segpub:

Starter Standard Professional Advanced Enterprise
  • 800MB space.
  • Unlimited POP/IMAP email accounts.
  • 5 FTP accounts.
  • 8GB of bandwidth/mo.
  • Unlimited Ezmlm mailing lists.
  • 5 MySQL databases.
  • 5 Subdomains.
  • Support for 1 Rails App.
  • 2GB space.
  • Unlimited POP/IMAP email accounts.
  • 10 FTP accounts.
  • 12GB of bandwidth/mo.
  • Unlimited Ezmlm mailing lists.
  • 10 MySQL databases.
  • 10 Subdomains.
  • Support for 2 Rails Apps.
  • 3GB space.
  • Unlimited POP/IMAP email accounts.
  • 25 FTP accounts.
  • 35GB of bandwidth/mo.
  • Unlimited Ezmlm mailing lists.
  • 25 MySQL databases.
  • 25 subdomains.
  • Support for 4 Rails Apps.
  • 4GB space.
  • Unlimited POP/IMAP email accounts.
  • 30 FTP accounts.
  • 60GB of bandwidth/mo.
  • Unlimited Ezmlm mailing lists.
  • 30 MySQL databases.
  • 30 subdomains.
  • Support for 6 Rails Apps.
  • 10GB space.
  • Unlimited POP/IMAP email accounts.
  • 50 FTP accounts.
  • 100GB of bandwidth/mo.
  • Unlimited Ezmlm mailing lists.
  • 50 MySQL databases.
  • 50 subdomains.
  • Support for 8 Rails Apps.
Pricing:
  • 3 month contract @ $30 AUD/month.
  • 6 month contract @ $25 AUD/month.
  • 12 month contract @ $20 AUD/month.
  • 3 month contract @ $40 AUD/month.
  • 6 month contract @ $35 AUD/month.
  • 12 month contract @ $30 AUD/month.
  • 3 month contract @ $65 AUD/month.
  • 6 month contract @ $60 AUD/month.
  • 12 month contract @ $55 AUD/month.
  • 3 month contract @ $120 AUD/month.
  • 6 month contract @ $115 AUD/month.
  • 12 month contract @ $110 AUD/month.
  • 3 month contract @ $190 AUD/month.
  • 6 month contract @ $185 AUD/month.
  • 12 month contract @ $180 AUD/month.

There are also two very good financial reasons to use SegPub:

  1. The strength of sterling at the moment;
  2. We won't have to pay VAT or the Australian equivalent (GST).

Even though it is possible to get cheaper web hosts, the sheer amount of encouraging recommendations, the high quality support provided and the scalability of their product has convinced me of their appropriateness. I recommend using the 12 month contract Starter package at first. This will cost around £8 every month which is very reasonable.

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