krystal.co.uk webhosting

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Has anyone had any experiences/use krystal.co.uk web hosting ?
https://krystal.co.uk/cloud-hosting/concrete5-hosting...

They offer a SSL cert and say they are optimized for C5.

Anyone have any experience?

gavthompson
 
mnakalay replied on at Permalink Reply
mnakalay
Hello,

You shouldn't believe those sites when they say they are optimized for a particular CMS unless they really have a focus on that.

For instance, this host says it's optimized for pretty much any known CMS and if you click on any of the links for any CMS, you will see the text is always the same, they just replace the name:
"Our best Concrete5 hosting platform yet..."
"Our best WordPress hosting platform yet..."
"Our best Drupal hosting platform yet..."

They are probably not optimized for any of them.

Concerning the SSL certificate, thanks to the "LEt's Encrypt" initiative (backed by Mozilla and other big companies) anyone can have a free SSL certificate so I don't think that's such a great offer.

Finally, beware that when they offer a certain amount of space, this usually means files + database.

So, for instance, the first plan at £2.99 /month with 1GB of space will probably not be enough for a Concrete5 website once you start adding pages and content.

Concrete5 keeps a history of changes so you can always go back to a previous stage. That fills up the database and with only 1GB you won't last long.

Having said so they could be a good host, I am only pointing at deceptive marketing practices.
gavthompson replied on at Permalink Reply
gavthompson
Thanks for the input mnakalay, I wasn't aware of the Let's Encrypt initiative, will for sure give it a look.

We currently are hosted with ukwebsolutionsdirect.co.uk but I feel the speeds could be better and I'm about to role out our site to our staff members which will be uploading a lot of pictures so we really could do with more space and speed.
gavthompson replied on at Permalink Reply
gavthompson
Just had a look on the Let's Encrypt site and krystal.co.uk is one of the hosts that support their certs so you called it right on that one.
ConcreteOwl replied on at Permalink Reply
ConcreteOwl
I have several websites hosted on Krystal's servers and have had nothing but good service from them, in fact I was using a company called Blackfoot Hosting that was bought out by Krystal a few years ago.
Blackfoot were also very good but since Krystal has taken over and moved all my sites on their SSD systems the speed of the server has increased nicely.
I use the 'Ruby' package..
Steevb replied on at Permalink Reply
Steevb
I have used 'Krystal' for just over a year now. ALL existing sites are being moved over and ALL new sites will be using 'Krystal'.

I have over a dozen sites running the 'Amethyst' package, plenty of room for a small site that's not heavy on media. However, will be looking to move all clients over to the 'Topaz' package when renewals are due, breathing space for client, maybe less support grief for me. Anyway, 20p a day for their service is a no brainer!

I also use 'Ruby' for my site and subdomains.

Support is amazing. Speed is good. SSL works perfectly. Who doesn't love cPanel?
mnakalay replied on at Permalink Reply
mnakalay
@steevb and @weyboat, could you share a few links to C5 websites hosted on Krystal, preferably 5.7 and above, to have a feel of the speed? That would be great.
Steevb replied on at Permalink Reply
Steevb
ConcreteOwl replied on at Permalink Reply
ConcreteOwl
https://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.paulsthaihouse.co.uk/Dcg8F1c3

https://gtmetrix.com/reports/www.deepsea.co.uk/lEKUojLb...

Both on 5.6.3.4
gavthompson replied on at Permalink Reply
gavthompson
Thanks for all the feedback folks, they do seem to be what I'm looking for.

I have asked them where their servers are and they are in the M25 corridor.

I think it will be the Ruby package I will go for since it's basically what we are paying for right now.
I'm just a little wary of switching hosts because we have O365 setup on our current domain and don't want to break that if we move.
mnakalay replied on at Permalink Reply
mnakalay
They do seem pretty fast
gavthompson replied on at Permalink Reply
gavthompson
Well I have changed over hosts to Krystal and everything went smooth enough with the switch.
The support was good even over the weekend.
I went for the Ruby package like the guys above, when they restored my CPanel backup the limits from my old host were there and a quick support call got them fixed.

Like the other guys mentioned, the Lets Encrypt certs via CPanel work great.

So yea another Thumbs up for Krystal.co.uk really happy so far.