BEST DEALS OF THE DAY Founded in XNUMX, Pickaweb was one of the UK's first web hosting providers. As they point out, their primary focus was simple yet ambitious: provide the services they would want for themselves while focusing on power, reliability, security, and support. They are primarily aimed at SMEs, as well as the self-employed. Today, the company serves more than twenty supposedly satisfied customers, and the number is still growing, just not as fast as it was at its peak. Pickaweb is based in the City of London (UK) with its only data center (not good news for customers of the service elsewhere). They claim the facility provides full redundancy of protected power, HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning), fire suppression, network connectivity, and on-site security personnel. They also add that their data center exceeds Tier XNUMX standards and runs on XNUMX% renewable energy, which helps facilitate the global green revolution. The official Pickaweb site is easy to use and its "About" section gives a lot of information about the company itself. If you're feeling particularly curious, you can also hear a Pickaweb story from its co-founder Tony Messer, or watch an introductory video in their data center, which is a nice little touch. There is also a weblog with well-written posts, although it doesn't seem to be updated often enough. When it comes to social networks, you can find Pickaweb on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Pickaweb offers an extensive range of hosting plans (Image credit: Pickaweb)
Award
Expecting to please everyone, Pickaweb offers a good variety of web hosting solutions including Shared, Mail, WP, Reseller, VPS, and Dedicated Hosting. While the costs are a bit higher than with similar providers, they are quite reasonable compared to other hosts in the UK or Europe normally. Most of Pickaweb's plans have struck the right balance between functionality and affordability. However, its entry-level plan called "Budget" is so skimpy on features that we question its right to exist in the first place. For the cost of €6.90 (€5) per month, it includes 30GB of storage space, 8GB of monthly bandwidth, a single email account and a single location, but without databases. MySQL, no PhpMyAdmin, no SSH access, no plugins or parked domains, and (if that wasn't bad enough) no apps to install. That means, no WP, no Joomla!, no Drupal Trademark, no Magento, no OpenCart, or any other popular app you can think of, so you better forget about the "Budget" plan. If you're looking for an easy-to-use package that won't hold you back, your best bet is the "Starter" package that will give you 50GB of storage space, 6GB of bandwidth, and a free domain name, all with plenty of room for hosting multiple sites, unlimited email accounts and MySQL databases, many applications for a simple installation and even a coupon for 12.40 months of free hosting (with annual contracts). All this will cost you €XNUMX (€XNUMX) a month if you go for a monthly contract, or a bit less if you go for a full year. Pickaweb offers a thirty-day money-back guarantee with its email and shared hosting plans. When it comes to payment methods, Pickaweb accepts the main credit / debit cards and Paypal.
Ease of use
Finding the right plan for what you had in mind shouldn't be a problem with Pickaweb, as they provide a lot of information that is presented appropriately in their hosting plans. Just be sure to pass up the entry-level plan, as there are still some free hosts (like Infinity Free) that have fewer features. Right after choosing a plan, you'll be prompted to choose what to do with the domain name, where you can register a new one (it's free for the first year with most plans), transfer an existing one, or use it as is. is about to update its nameservers. After that, you can decide the billing cycle and certain add-ons, including multiple SSL certificates, SpamExpert, and Weebly's drag and drop site builder. Before proceeding with the payment, you will be asked to create an account with Pickaweb (nothing unusual here), or simply to log in if you already have one.
The Control Panel is where you'll find your services, account details, and support options (Image credit: Pickaweb) As soon as your purchase is complete, you'll receive a welcome email with login details, with which you will have easy access to Pickaweb's easy-to-use user interface. From there, you'll want to go into your Control Panel, and in our case, it's a simple to use Linux-based cPanel. However, if you choose to use a Windows server (you can do this with VPS and enterprise-level plans), you'll receive a custom Windows-based control panel.
Pickaweb lets you run your site using industry standard cPanel (Image credit: Pickaweb) From cPanel you can manage your account details, request help, or go straight to the business and launch a Softaculous app installer with a single click to have in your hands WP, Joomla!, Magento or other useful applications (there are around a hundred). A free Weebly site builder is included with every plan, and it will give you a decent number of templates, drag-and-drop features, and gadgets you can use to create content, embed social media posts, and more. YouTube videos and much more. .
We use GTmetrix to measure Pickaweb's prime site uptime and response time (Image credit: GTmetrix)
Speed and experience
After testing the speed of Pickaweb's main site, we got very good results, although nothing unusual. A test using GTmetrix showed that it took 6 seconds to fully load the place, which is one second of the recommended load time (ie 5 seconds) but significantly better than the XNUMX second average. All other speed measurements showed either average or above average results finishing with a respectable B (eighty-eight%) as the final score. Pickaweb offers a XNUMX% uptime guarantee with most plans, while the offer stands at XNUMX% with VPS and dedicated servers. Throughout our two-week test (provided by UptimeRobot), we couldn't capture a single second of downtime, which means they probably deliver the goods.
You can contact Pickaweb by live chat, mail or phone (Image credit: Pickaweb)
Support
There are multiple ways to request help from Pickaweb support staff and they also include live chat, UK mail and number, but you can also contact them via Facebook and Twitter. Although, theoretically, each and every one of the options is available twenty-four hours a day, in practice they are not. Sometimes the phone won't be reachable so you'll have to ask for a call back and the staff promise to call you "as soon as possible". In addition to this, the XNUMX hour service does not apply if you require technical support, so it is best to call them during UK business hours.
Pickaweb Knowledge Base includes video tutorials and other resources to get you started (Image Credit: Pickaweb) When it comes to self-help, Pickaweb has a well-stocked knowledge base, many hosting-related video tutorials, links to cPanel manuals and Plesk, and a resource library containing primarily different marketing guides. There are usually more than a few alternative options and most of these tutorials seem particularly easy to use.
Competition
When it comes to entry-level hosting plans, Pickaweb simply can't beat Infinity Free. Aside from giving you unlimited disk space, unlimited bandwidth, four hundred MySQL databases, free SSL on your domains, and free DNS services, the Infinity Free plan is totally free (and no, it's not. There are no forced ads). However, if you need more than shared hosting, Infinity Free is not enough. Like Pickaweb, Catalyst2 is a UK based web host that offers a huge variety of hosting solutions for individuals, SMEs. In terms of cost, Catalyst2 is a bit more affordable in every way, but their hosting packages are even more rigorous when it comes to freebies than Pickaweb's. Although having a host in the UK is not essential, US based hosts like HostGator and Bluehost will hardly break your budget, but they will still give you plenty of freebies for which most hosts hosts would charge you. Both offer one year domain registration with their annual plans, free domain and location transfer, unlimited bandwidth, free SSL certificate and many applications for a simple installation. However, HostGator scores even higher by launching an easy-to-use site builder and a liberal XNUMX-day money-back guarantee.
Final verdict
Pickaweb has a good variety of hosting solutions with a decent amount of freebies, however their services can barely justify the cost you'll have to pay for them, let alone the entry-level plan that qualifies to be wiped out of existence. Another challenge you may face when hosting with Pickaweb seems to be their slow customer support of the service, which is sure to put off less experienced users. If you're still interested in finding out what Pickaweb has to offer, don't worry, their XNUMX-day money-back guarantee will have you covered. However, while having a host in the UK is not essential, with HostGator and Bluehost you can get all the same features (and more) but at a lower cost. THE BEST DEALS OF THE DAY