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Namesco review

Verdict

Extremely easy to set up as a virtual ISP, but it has a couple of limitations of which you should be aware.

Review Date: 12 Nov 2007

Reviewed By: Mark Newton

Price when reviewed:

Overall Rating
4 stars out of 6

Namesco's website screams "web hosting from £1". It isn't the most professional of starts, which could make convincing clients you should handle their web hosting difficult. However, if Namesco can offer such great deals, what can it offer you as a virtual ISP?

Quite a lot, it seems. Its control panel is simple to use, being both clear and easy to understand. It also offers pricing packages aimed squarely at the web designer; these packages offer full backup capabilities to protect your clients' websites in the event of something bad happening.

However, be aware that Namesco limits the bandwidth to your websites and, although this won't result in a client's site going down if it suddenly becomes popular - as often happens if an article is picked up by a news aggregation site, such as Digg - it may bring extra charges. That said, Namesco will warn you as you use more than half your allowance that month, and you can either pay the extra 2p per megabyte or upgrade to a larger bandwidth package at the end of the month.

Namesco, like many others, places a lot of importance on customer support, and it's impressively open about its response times, publishing them at www.names.co.uk/call-statistics.html. Coupled with the network status pages at www.names.co.uk/network_status.html, it all helps to keep you informed of any issues that might arise.

The company offers free telephone support from 8am to 8pm, Monday through Friday, and 10am to 6pm on Saturday and Sunday. There's no extra out-of-hours support, although of course it monitors server status 24/7. We also found the staff helpful during our tests.

Namesco's extensive range of products means you'd be able to offer your clients almost any online service they need. Its control panel is also one of the easiest to use. Where it falls down - and why it doesn't get an award this month - is the lack of direct out-of-hours support. After all, that may well be the time you decide to update a client's server, and if something goes wrong with the upgrade you're on your own until the following morning.

That said, becoming a virtual ISP is easy with Namesco offerings, and the number of offerings it provides make it well worth a look.

Author: Mark Newton

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User comments

Hosting Reviews

When i am with name.co.uk always my server is down.. When i called for the support they tell me the technical details which is not aware..and one of client recommended unlimitedgb they make me to know all technical details and guide me step by step...

By Gadin on 1 Dec 2010

Renewals

Nemes.co.uk works fine but they have just applied a 200% increase to the cost of registration I paid 2 years ago. What a massive rip off.

By johngwm on 20 Jan 2011

It's a trap!!

You'll be in for a shock when it comes time to renew your domain - £48 for a .com for 2 years (compared with $16/£12 for 2 years with godaddy!)... want to transfer away, they'll charge you £12 a domain to move.

So much for their claim of having 'no hidden fees' - once they have you, they'll take you to the cleaners.

By IanSankey on 15 Jun 2011

Used to be one of the best, now not so much.

Namesco pricing has crept up and up, when most hosting prices have gone down, but the customer support has always been very good. At least it had untill recently, I've had to contact support five times for diffrent issues over the past few months and every time its taken over 24 hours to get a response from them, then when I respond it takes another day to get their next response. I picked a UK company because I expect a quick response in my timezone.

On top of this questions aren't answered in replys and on the whole you get the impression they can't cope with the volume of issues or else don't have enough employees. You shouldn't have to complain to a company to get them to look at your support ticket, but that seems to be the case now.

I've been hosting sites with them for nearly ten years now but I'm sorry to say I won't be any longer.

By DudleyC on 16 Jul 2011

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