U.K.-based Birch Hosting was formed by a website owner who wasn’t happy with the support he was getting from his website hosting provider. It should therefore come as no surprise that customer satisfaction takes center stage at Birch Hosting.
This company specializes in delivering affordable hosting packages from its three U.K. data centers. Its website is in English, which is not surprising for such a thoroughly British business.
Features and Ease of Use
Here’s a quick rundown of the features you can from Birch Hosting:
- 9% uptime guarantee
- R1Soft backups up to four times a day, with 30-day retention
- Domain registration available (including .uk domains)
- Limited add-on domains, but custom plans available for multiple domain owners
- Free SSL certificates with all plans
- Limited Linux bandwidth and storage, but unlimited with Windows hosting
The biggest benefit of the affordable shared hosting packages is that you can create your own virtual environment with CloudLinux so you can avoid the adverse effects of other hosted customers.
The Softaculous application installer that comes with cPanel makes managing your websites and software quite simple. There are over three-hundred scripts for you to choose from including the popular WordPress, Magento, and Joomla content management systems. What’s more, the RVsitebuilder pro will help you whip up your website with no technical skills whatsoever.
While all the packages are e-commerce ready, larger CMS-based websites and online stores often struggle on shared hosting services, so Birch Hosting’s Linux dedicated servers give you extra power for CMS or online stores.
When it comes to security, Imunify360 stops malicious software from stopping your site.
Pricing and Support
When you choose a plan, you have to decide between a shared hosting Linux package, a dedicated server Linux package, or a Windows cloud hosting package. The provider’s website provides all the details about these plans, making it simple to make the right choice.
The Linux shared hosting packages are as cheap as it gets, and they allow you to host up to 8 domains with up to 10 GB disk space and 100 GB bandwidth. If that’s not enough, you can move up to the dedicated server packages that offer up to 30 GB disk space and 300 GB bandwidth. It is disappointing that these packages don’t offer unlimited storage and bandwidth for the price tag, though.
Separate cloud hosting packages are available for Windows users, and these Windows plans come at great prices with unlimited disk space and bandwidth.
You can pay for plans monthly or yearly, with discounts of up to a month’s worth of hosting available for an annual commitment. You can also take advantage of a sign-up offer and a 30-day money-back guarantee that should get you out of your yearly commitment if anything goes wrong within the first month.
As I said at the outset, customer satisfaction takes center stage at Birch Hosting so you might be surprised to hear that telephone and live chat support is not 24/7. However, the very efficient ticket support system ensures that your questions are answered quickly. Once you’ve signed up as a customer, you can get priority ticket support from within the client area. When I tested the ticket system as a non-customer, I received a reply within an hour:
Want to try supporting yourself instead? Just jump into Birch Hosting’s well-stocked knowledge base to find the answers to your common questions.
