Below are listed all shared hosting providers who have also attained Host Apprise's Bronze Medal or above. To find out what the Bronze Medal means, please see our Quality Medals guideline. For other shared hosting providers see the 'Related Pages' links on the right of this page.


Shared hosting is sometimes referred to as web hosting. If you have a shared hosting account your website will share its server and resources with other websites. The number of sites housed on a server will depend on the host.

On the good side it is relatively cheap and suits sites with static content well.

On the down side your site's performance may be degraded by other resource intensive sites, in terms of processor or bandwidth for instance. Also, you may be prevented from running some software or, scripts on the server for security reasons. Security can be a problem, hence restrictions on what you can do on the server and with your site.

Finally collecting customer information or running a commerce site is inappropriate for just a shared hosting package, you really need a secure socket layer connection, SSL, which requires a static Internet Protocol, IP address, both of which you normally have to purchase in addition to the shared package. Some packages allow you to use a shared SSL connection, this is where a single connection is shared between other sites on the server. The problem with this is that on your user's browser it may look like a secure connection, but the site address that appears in your user's browser may be different from your site's domain name. This can freak out some customers, resulting in less sales.

Do not be put off by the last two paragraphs. Shared hosting can be thought of as the first wrung of website development. As your site develops you may move on to more sophisticated packages, but at the beginning it may be all that is required and at a considerable saving. This site for instance is run from a shared hosting package supplied by Heart Internet, note this is not a plug, it is merely proof that we have nothing against shared hosting. After all this site is built on it.

Listed below are shared hosting providers in the UK. To appear on this list;

  1. a host must provide shared web hosting services to UK customers and businesses,
  2. the host must be based in the UK, with servers in the UK,
  3. the host must specialize in providing web hosting services, hosting must be their main area of business,
  4. We must know of the host's existence, if you know of one that we are unaware of, please let us know.

Companies who provide hosting and other services, such as web design and/or consultancy, are not included here if hosting is not their main area of business. If you want a list of web design agencies; many of whom also provide hosting, some on their own servers, then see the Website Design list. If an agency/host thinks they should be on this list and are not, let us know why.

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Last updated on Friday 25th May 2007