Moving from 1and1 to vidahost (or similar)

1and1 host both the domains and the websites, and I've never used another hosting company.

So they might be the worst in the world or they might be the best, I don't know, what do you think? And is it a good idea to move domains to somewhere who won't be hosting the sites? Somewhere British is preferred for these services.

The good thing with another webhost, I can easily separate the sites so that one dev isn't going to touch another site - I can give them access to the cpanel knowing that it's home to only one site. Is that how it's usually done, do devs expect/need access to admin? or will the ftp protocol suffice?

Lots of question there, please feel free to take just one if you like.

Thanks

Brocberry wrote:1and1 host both the domains and the websites, and I've never used another hosting company.

So they might be the worst in the world or they might be the best, I don't know, what do you think? ...

I'll answer just this part.

In my view, moving from 1and1 to almost anywhere else is a good idea -and moving to Vidahost one of the best ideas. If you want to host the site in one place and the domain in another, I'd leave the domain with 1and1, and host the site at Vidahost. Better, transfer the lot to Vidahost

Vidahost are a very small team, but good guys who will go 10 extra miles to help. Have a look their forum to see how involved they are.

1and1 are OK I suppose, but awkward to work with. No cPanel: phpMyAdmin is a bit harder to work with; limited numbers of databases (at present); plus you still need a .htaccess file to get PHP5x to work. Also they are putting up their prices in May, by close on 50%. Not good value.

1and1 have had issues with setting up the mail params in opencart before so i would suggest moving from them.

keep the domain with them, just change the nameservers to point to another host and set up the grab from the new host cpanel.

devs dont really need access to cpanel unless they need to create sql databases and add email addresses. Other than that, ftp is all thats really needed for devs.

Thanks guys. I will need hosting for four sites - assuming I move to vidahost, what package should I get?...

I asked 1and1 how much bandwidth we used and was only 4GB, so not much.

There will be two carts for the business and a cart a brochure site for my Dad. I've not used cpanel before but I understand that effectively there is one main domain and the rest are addon domains... could that mean that they would suffer seo-wise because it's seen to be an afterthought rather than a proper site?

nope, it wont touch seo at all, its not a problem.

yeah it will be a main domain linked to the host, and then other domains added, but all they share is space and bandwidth, seo urls are independent. seo urls always include the domain name so wont conflict with each other at all.

you can have seperate ftp access for each domain name, so you can avoid giving access to domains.

Im with agilityhoster, i have my main domain, and about 10 others all sharing web space and bandwidth, my main domain accesses all sites, while i can set up seperate ftp logins for each if i wish.