Non-US resident

[Daro]

Hi, I'm a potential customer, UK based and I want to start up a community website using Joomla, I'm an absolute beginner and I'm not sure how being outside of the US will affect me, especially since most of my users will come from Asia. Hostgator seem to come out top in lists of the best webhosts by customers and experts and I've been really impressed, however I'm a little nervous about signing up with a company that doesn't have a physical UK/EU address, am I wrong to be?

Thanks for any advice you can give me,
Daro

[dewt]

In this case yes you are wrong to be nervous. I'm based in the UK and have been with HG for three years now. The only problem I have with the different countries is that I don't know exactly how much my hosting will cost each month due to the vagaries of the exchange rate. This would be the same for any host outside the UK.

I transfered here from a EU based host due to the major difference in the quality of support. When you add in the help and support from the experts here in the forum then HG does become rather hard to beat in my opinion.

[Daro]

Thanks for your reply, I'm not too worried about the exchange rate so if that's your biggest worry it sounds like Hostgator is a good choice. The community and support here is great and is another reason why I'm so interested in Hostgator, but when you've needed to contact them directly have you ever had any problems?

[EarlyOut]

For support, you're generally best using support tickets or Live Chat, rather than phoning. So where you live doesn't really matter.

[Daro]

That's what I thought, thanks for confirming though.

[dewt]

The longest I've had to wait for Live Chat was 3 minutes. I've been kept on hold a lot longer by other hosts that I phoned. Tickets tend to get a reply within a couple of hours but all of mine have been of a very low urgency. Bear in mind that HG offer a 45 day money back guarantee as well (doesn't apply to domain name purchases) so you can always try them out. If it doesn't work (which is unlikely) then you would only be out of pocket for the domain name.

[BroadlandHost]

I can understand your concern.

I used to have a Reseller with a US host, although I had no major problems sometimes I had to wait longer than I had hoped for support, I put this down to the time difference, or maybe the host had issues at the time

The prices can be hard to understand as they arn't in British pounds however you can usually find out how much you'll have to pay by using a money converter I use http://www.xe.com/ucc.

Just for the record, I plan to open an account with HostGator I have done some researching and I am UK based too. They seem one of the best providers and I have compared there prices to other providers and have seen a big difference, you also tend to get more for your money too.

I hope this helps, personally see no reason why you shouldn't give HostGator a try.

Best wishes,

Chris

[eurgbp]

I am in UK and Gator was good to me, these guys are pros, they've got 500 employees What difference does it make for you to know that they are in UK EU or not? Do you want to sue them in the future or something and looking for courts' jurisdiction?

[Daro]

Haha, no I'm not trying to sue them, I guess it's because I was always taught to expect websites to have a physical address and local number because there were so many fraud sites back in the day, I blame Watchdog!

One of my concerns was getting in touch with them but the fact that they supply so much online help and that so many users find that help useful allays my concern on that front.

[dewt]

Originally Posted by Daro

Haha, no I'm not trying to sue them, I guess it's because I was always taught to expect websites to have a physical address and local number because there were so many fraud sites back in the day, I blame Watchdog!

One of my concerns was getting in touch with them but the fact that they supply so much online help and that so many users find that help useful allays my concern on that front.

The physical address and phone number on your website is the one that you put there. Those are for people to be able to get in touch with you not the site. They are a very good idea (and a necessity if selling).