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tsoHost Review 2024: The Marketing Claims Are Misleading

Ari Denial Written by: Ari Denial

As a host that advertises cloud hosting even with its economy packages, you’d expect tsoHost to deliver on performance – after all, its website promises that “you can count on Mach speeds”. I never take web hosting claims at face value, however, and my thorough testing of tsoHost reveals some good points, but some (very) bad points too. 

We hosted the same WordPress website on the most popular web hosting platforms and measured their performance
Click here to see our results >>

Overview

tsoHost offers affordable web hosting
tsoHost runs regular deals and discounts, but are they worth it?
1

Cloud-Based Web Hosting for WordPress and More

tsoHost is one of many smaller web hosting companies that have been overshadowed by bigger, international web hosting providers (with equally bigger advertising budgets!). Just because it doesn’t pop up at the top of recommended web host lists doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not a top choice… or does it?

During my thorough testing of tsoHost, I encountered some pretty big issues concerning the hosting services advertised compared to what you actually get. It’s not all bad, but there are definitely some things you need to know before you consider signing up.

tsoHost is based in the UK, but its shared hosting plans offer a choice of four data centres, in Amsterdam, Strasbourg, North America, and Asia (no location specified). That means that as well as being ideal for a visitor base in the UK and Northern Europe, tsoHost also works well if you have an international target audience. The default/recommended data centre is Strasbourg, but you can request a different one.

There is a range of hosting types to choose from, including shared (cPanel) hosting, managed WordPress hosting, VPS (virtual private server) hosting, and dedicated server hosting – so no matter how big or small your business or blog is, tsoHost has a type of hosting to suit.  

A word of caution, however: tsoHost claims to offer cloud hosting, but when I questioned this with the support team, it turns out that its servers use CloudLinux, which is NOT actual cloud hosting. Rather, CloudLinux is an operating system that web hosts can use on shared hosting servers to give you some of the benefits of cloud hosting (such as better reliability and allocated resources).

My review focuses on the Economy hosting plan that I signed up for, and I put every aspect of tsoHost’s service to the test. Over three months, I evaluated features, conducted in-depth performance tests, and contacted customer support to bring you a hands-on lowdown on what tsoHost is really like to host with.

The TL;DR of my experience with tsoHost is simple: it’s an average host with customer service that responds quickly, but it lacks some of the value-added features that other hosts (such as eUKHost ) offer. I also found its performance to be lacking, especially compared to Hostinger, which scored much higher in our performance tests .

4.0

Features

Generous Hosting Plans – but Some Essentials Missing

Some of tsoHost's cPanel plan features
tsoHost’s plans look good – until you realise what’s missing

If you need plenty of storage space for high-resolution images, digital downloads, or video files, then tsoHost’s generous hosting plans will seem pretty attractive. Even its Economy cPanel and WordPress hosting plans come with 100GB of storage, and all other plans have unlimited storage (subject to acceptable usage policies, of course). 

You can host multiple websites on all plans except Economy (5 on Deluxe, 10 on Ultimate, and 200 on Maximum).

But it’s not all positives with tsoHost, I’m afraid. I was disappointed to find that it doesn’t support the use of free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates. This means that if you’re hosting multiple websites, you’ll have to purchase an SSL certificate for each one (which is hardly budget-friendly).

You don’t even get a free SSL certificate for the first year on some plans – this perk is only included with the Ultimate and Maximum plans.

There’s really no reason (other than to make more money) why tsoHost shouldn’t support free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates. The vast majority of web hosts support them or at least include other free SSL certificates on their plans.

My other major issue with tsoHost is that it advertises “managed WordPress hosting”, but on the features page for WordPress hosting, there’s no mention of optimisation, backups, or automatic updates. Turns out it’s not managed hosting at all. And when you click the “buy now” link on the sales page for WordPress hosting, what’s actually added to your basket is cPanel hosting.

To make things clear about this: “managed WordPress hosting” usually refers to a hosting package where your host will do daily or weekly backups, provide automatic updates for your WordPress installation(s), and include tools for optimising your website. SiteGround is a good example of actual managed hosting (check out our full SiteGround review if you want to know more).

Technically, you can set up things like automatic updates and backups for WordPress from the 1-click installer in cPanel, but it’s misleading to advertise managed WordPress hosting when it’s exactly the same as “regular” web hosting.

tsoHost's "managed WordPress hosting" is actually just cPanel hosting
tsoHost’s “managed WordPress hosting” is just cPanel hosting, not managed at all

CloudLinux Hosting

tsoHost’s web hosting plans are advertised as cloud-based, which (in theory) improves performance and reliability. As I mentioned above, the servers use an OS (operating system) called CloudLinux for better stability (less chance of experiencing downtime) and higher levels of security, including the use of CageFS to keep your web space isolated and protected from other users on the same server.

You also get “allocated resources” so that if another website on the same server experiences a sudden surge in traffic, your website won’t be affected. It’s not as good as actual cloud hosting, but it’s better than regular Linux OS servers.

Backup and Restore

tsoHost doesn’t advertise its backup and restore features for its WordPress plans, probably because this is a feature that’s included in cPanel rather than something that tsoHost provides itself. You can set up automatic backups via the settings panel in the Installatron 1-click installer section of cPanel.

Automatic backups and updates can be configured in cPanel
Instead of a special tsoHost backup feature, you get the usual from cPanel

You can easily restore backups, too – which I was glad to see! This means that if you install a plugin or theme that causes an issue, you can easily roll your website back to an earlier version.

Easily restore backups with tsoHost
One thing I like about tsoHost is how easy it is to view, manage, and restore backups

Free Managed Migrations

When you sign up for any web hosting plan from tsoHost and pay for 12 months up-front, you’ll be prompted to add the free basic migration service to your order. This is ideal if you already have a website hosted elsewhere and want an expert to migrate it to your tsoHost account.

The number of migrations you can do depends on the plan you choose (one on the Economy plan, while the Maximum plan includes five basic migrations and three e-commerce migrations). You can purchase additional migrations for an extra cost.

tsoHost promises to complete the transfer as quickly as possible (usually within 24-48 hours) and to minimise any downtime. Although you can migrate a website yourself by taking a backup from your old hosting provider, I’d recommend taking advantage of this free migration service.

Free Premium Email Accounts

No matter which hosting plan you choose, you benefit from a year of free premium email accounts (e.g., [email protected]) powered by Flockmail. Even the Economy plan includes 100 premium mailboxes (each with 10GB of storage), and the Ultimate and Maximum plans have unlimited mailboxes.

Flockmail is incredibly user-friendly and includes an advanced address book, advanced calendar, and high-level spam and anti-virus protection. There are desktop and mobile (Android and iOS) apps you can download for free too.

4.7

Ease of use

One of the Best Setup Experiences – Perfect for Beginners

After the headaches I had setting up accounts with some other UK hosts I’ve reviewed recently, my experience with tsoHost was pretty good. The whole process – from choosing a plan to logging in to my new WordPress installation – literally took ten minutes.

Creating a New Account

As I was testing tsoHost’s signup process, I discovered some interesting things that you need to know about. Initially, I clicked the Buy Now button on the Compare Features page – only to find that I wasn’t getting the promotional price that was advertised on the previous page. I clicked back onto the main sales page, clicked Buy Now, and got the reduced price. Very sneaky, tsoHost!

The other thing I found was that unlike with many hosts, I wasn’t prompted to search for or add a domain name during the checkout process. There was a link to go back to add a domain name to my basket (and you can get the free domain name from your account dashboard later) but it’s not quite as smooth as when the domain selector is included in the checkout process.

Check the price you're paying before checkout
Be sure you’re getting the promotional price before you check out

Managing Your Account Using cPanel

I found it pretty easy to use the account dashboard and manage my webspace with cPanel. tsoHost includes a simple login button for direct access to your cPanel admin area (so you don’t need to remember a separate user name or password). The main page for your hosting is also really simple and great for beginners, since there’s an action centre with some recommended steps to complete.

Manage your account in tsoHost's dashboard
tsoHost’s dashboard offers easy access to cPanel

Although tsoHost has a customised version of cPanel, it’s still basically the same as other hosts’ cPanels, so if you’re already familiar with cPanel you’ll be able to navigate it easily. If you’re a complete beginner, the sheer number of icons and options can be a little overwhelming, but it’s pretty well-organised.

Connecting a Domain and Installing WordPress

tsoHost has one of the fastest and easiest domain name setups and WordPress installations I’ve encountered. It uses Installatron for its 1-click app installations, and let me tell you, Installatron is way better than some other 1-click installers. Totally beginner-friendly and with extra settings that some installers just don’t offer (for example the automatic backups and updates settings).

Using Installatron to install WordPress
Installing WordPress with Installatron is super easy

When I’ve bought hosting and domain names at the same time with other hosts, I’ve sometimes had to wait up to 24 hours for the domain name to “resolve” (i.e., to be accessible by typing in the domain name) so I could log into my WordPress dashboard. Not with tsoHost. No, my new domain name literally resolved in minutes. I don’t know if that’s always the case, as I’ve only tried it once, but I was really impressed!

4.6

Performance

Decent Performance – But It Could Be Much Better

One of the most important things I look for in a good web hosting company is excellent performance. Of course, all hosts claim to deliver fast speeds (tsoHost claims to offer “Mach speed”), but I never take those claims at face value. Let’s get real: no host is going to claim to have bad, or even average, performance, are they?

To sum up tsoHost’s performance, the best word I can use is “average”. Its page loading speed was somewhere around the 1.2-second mark – which is fast and well below the three-seconds Google recommends – but other UK hosts could easily beat it. As for its reliability, well, it managed a decent 99.93% uptime over the monitoring period, so you don’t need to worry about your website being down for long periods.

I’m going to do a deep dive into all the performance tests I used, so there’s a lot of technical details ahead. Not interested in the technical stuff? No problem, you can skip straight to my experiences with tsoHost’s support.

To test tsoHost’s performance, I installed WordPress on the Economy plan and uploaded a customised SimpleShift one-page website theme. Some review sites use a virtually blank website, but that isn’t going to give accurate performance results – who cares about the performance of an empty website?

For accurate results about how your website might perform on tsoHost, the customised theme I used has text and non-optimised HD images, like you’d get with an average landing page website. (There’s a reason for using non-optimised images – I wanted to contact support for help with optimisation and see if they’d notice, and then test the website performance afterwards.) If you want the full details of how we test web hosts at Website Planet, you can check out this article.

I kept the test website online for several months – and initially, I intended to keep it online so that you could test it for yourself. The problem with that, though, is that it would be easy for tsoHost to find my review and manipulate the results (boosting the performance behind the scenes, for example). The website was available at autonomous-shoes-uk-k.co.uk.

I tested performance using three different tools – GTmetrix, Sucuri Load Time Tester, and UptimeRobot.

Test site for tsoHost
The landing page I used to test tsoHost’s performance

GTmetrix

The GTmetrix tests showed the tsoHost test website loading in an average of 1.2 seconds (I tested multiple times) – way below the Google recommendation of 2-3 seconds. However, compared to other hosts that I’ve tested with the same landing page theme, this is one of the slower page loading speeds (the best had an average of 0.7 seconds).

A half-second difference hardly seems like much, but, be honest, how frustrating is it when you’re browsing on your smartphone and a web page doesn’t load instantly? In my tests, there were only two UK-based hosts that performed worse than tsoHost for average page loading speed.

Unfortunately, as you can see from the screenshot below, the GTmetrix tests resulted in a PageSpeed score of 68%, which is a D ranking. That’s not terrible (the average score is 75%), but the same test theme generated scores of 88-89%, a B ranking, with better hosts. 

PageSpeed tells you how well-optimised a website is – so the D ranking reflects the fact that tsoHost’s servers aren’t optimised for WordPress. Since I tested after tsoHost’s support team said they’d performed optimisations on my website, the D ranking is quite disappointing. I’d have to install and use an optimisation plugin for WordPress to improve the PageSpeed score.

The landing page I used to test tsoHost’s performance
Disappointing performance results from GTmetrix

Sucuri Load Time Tester

I also tested using the Sucuri Load Time Tester to see how fast the website loads from different locations around the world as well as the UK. The results, as you can see below, are slightly different compared to those from GTmetrix, with a page load time of 0.389 seconds when tested from London. The variation in results is to be expected since each performance test tool has its own testing setup.

You’ll see that load times from test locations outside of Western Europe are significantly longer, so tsoHost is fine if your target audience is in the UK but not so great if you’re targeting an international audience. Compared to other UK-based hosts, tsoHost is fairly average.

Sucuri Load Time Tester results for tsoHost test website
tsoHost’s load speeds are pretty good in Western Europe

UptimeRobot

My final performance test was to evaluate tsoHost’s reliability, measured by monitoring uptime over a period of three months. While the average over that period (99.93%) isn’t the best out of all the UK hosts I’ve tested, it’s still comfortably above the 99.9% uptime guarantee.

Average uptime report from Uptime Robot for tsoHost
The average uptime for the test website as reported by UptimeRobot

While we’re on the topic of uptime guarantees, there’s something a little different about tsoHost’s guarantee. Unlike many hosts, its reimbursement for failure to meet this guarantee in any calendar month is pretty generous. If your uptime drops below 99.9%, then you get a credit of a full week’s hosting cost to your account.

You do have to request it through a support ticket (it won’t be applied automatically) – but this is one of the best reimbursement SLAs (service level agreements) that I’ve come across.

4.0

Support

Rapid Responses – but Misleading Information

Getting help when something goes wrong with your web hosting can be a bit hit-and-miss with some hosts – but tsoHost’s support team is quick to respond. Ticket support is available 24/7, while live chat and phone support are available 7am-midnight (UK time) seven days a week.

Testing the live chat support of web hosts is one of my top priorities, as this is the best way to gauge the quality of support – do the support agents understand my questions and give clear answers?

The tsoHost agent I chatted with seemed to be a native English speaker, and I was impressed by the clear and concise way that he explained things. Of course, my further investigation revealed that there’s no difference between cPanel and WordPress hosting with tsoHost. The agent’s comments about optimisation on WordPress plans were misleading, and I do not appreciate that.

Live Chat support from tsoHost
tsoHost’s live chat support agent was somewhat misleading

I also used the ticket support to request help with WordPress installation, optimisation, and theme installation. You can see from the screenshots below that I received detailed replies to my questions – which is a refreshing change compared to hosts that simply direct you to a support article and offer no other help. However, the big issue that I have with tsoHost’s support is that one more than one occasion, the support agent seemed to outright lie!

You’ll see in the exchanges below that the support agents mention Softaculous, which was being used as the 1-click installer at the time; tsoHost has since moved away from using Softaculous in favour of Installatron, as I’ve mentioned in the features section above. 

Support Ticket exchange with tsoHost regarding WordPress
tsoHost’s agents gave me detailed instructions for installing WordPress

When I asked about WordPress optimisation, the support agent provided a detailed response, claimed to have made some changes to settings, and suggested I use an optimisation plugin. On the surface, this was more helpful than many of the hosts I’ve tested. However, when I looked further into the optimisations that the agent mentioned in the screenshot below, I couldn’t see any evidence of the actions actually being performed.

Support from tsoHost regarding WordPress optimization
tsoHost’s agent helped optimise my WordPress website

Although the support agent wasn’t able to help install my WordPress theme, this isn’t particularly unusual. However, if tsoHost’s WordPress hosting was actually managed as it claims, I would have expected a greater level of support with this issue.

Asking tsoHost for help with installing WordPress themes
An honest (albeit unhelpful) response from tsoHost to my enquiry about help with WordPress themes
4.0

Pricing

Cheap Hosting, but Additional Costs Can Mount Up

With plans starting at less than the cost of a BigMac meal per month, tsoHost is pretty affordable, with plans to suit most budgets and needs. It’s not as cheap as the international giant Hostinger (which has servers in the Netherlands) – but Hostinger is hard to beat, price-wise. Compared to other UK-based hosting companies, tsoHost is pretty average.

There are some things to be aware of with tsoHost. Firstly, the prices advertised don’t include VAT, so you’ll need to factor in an extra 20% to the advertised costs. Secondly, as I’ve mentioned before, free SSL certificates are only available on the Ultimate and Maximum plans, and that’s only for the first year.

Having to purchase an SSL certificate will significantly increase your total price – and if you stay with tsoHost longer than a year, you can expect to pay double the advertised price for the Economy plan with SSL in year two. Other hosts who support free SSL certificates from Let’s Encrypt are much more affordable.

Free domains are included for the first year with all plans when you choose to pay for 12 months in advance. There is a monthly payment option, but it’s cheaper to pay for 12 months up-front. You can pay by PayPal or credit/debit card (card payments are processed by SagePay, and all major credit cards are accepted).

Like most hosts, there’s a money-back guarantee if you decide that tsoHost isn’t right for you. Simply request a cancellation and refund within the first 30 days of your plan (annual plans) or the first 48 hours (monthly plans). tsoHost promises that no questions will be asked and your refund will be processed quickly.

I decided to put it to the test by signing up with a different email address and then requesting a cancellation. To my surprise, the money was back in my bank account within three working days.

Cancelling Your Account

When I wanted to cancel my tsoHost account, I was happy to find that the process is pretty simple. The “request cancellation” button on the “product details” page isn’t hidden away like it is with some other hosts! 

TsoHost has a simple cancelation form
Choose your reason for cancellation and proceed

There’s a simple account cancellation request form that takes a few seconds to complete, and you can cancel your domain at the same time. There’s also a choice of when you want your hosting to be cancelled. If you choose “immediately”, you’ll see a popup window asking you to confirm, so there’s no chance of deleting your hosting account by mistake.

Comparison

How does tsoHost match up to the competition?

1HostingerCompareOur Score4.9Compare
1IONOSCompareOur Score4.8Compare
1tsoHostCompareOur Score4.3Compare
1Go4HostingCompareOur Score2.4Compare

tsoHost REVIEW: BOTTOM LINE

Should tsoHost be on your shortlist when choosing a web host? Well, I guess that depends. If you want truly managed WordPress hosting, then tsoHost isn’t for you. The lack of free SSLs is very problematic as well. Personally, I did not appreciate how the company oversells its services, which really didn’t include what was promised.  

tsoHost isn’t all bad, however. I had a good experience with customer support, and setting up and managing my account was very easy. Ultimately, there are better UK hosting providers to choose from.

Before you make any final decisions, I suggest you check out Hostinger’s latest deals1. This international host provides excellent performance for an unbelievably low price.

FAQ

Do I need a host with data centers in the UK?

If you’re targeting a UK audience, it’s best to choose a hosting provider with a data center in the UK. This will give you the best page loading speeds for your website’s visitors. TsoHost is London-based with a UK data center, and it’s one of the best hosts for UK websites in 2024.

Does TsoHost have cPanel?

Not only does TsoHost offer cPanel, it’s actually a managed service as well. That means TsoHost will take care of all the security, updates, and server admin so you can focus more on your site’s content. 

Which gives you better value: TsoHost, or GoDaddy?

If you follow its trail of ownership, TsoHost is actually owned by GoDaddy. But these are two completely separate web hosting companies. TsoHost gives you superior value in the UK, but if you’re looking to host a site for any other market, GoDaddy is the better option.

But neither of these companies made our list of the top 10 web hosts for 2024.

Will the cost of my hosting go up when I renew?

TsoHost offers frequent discounts, and when it does, you can find these deals on our coupons page. But most of its discounts are for the first year only. After that, the cost of your hosting will go up to its regular price – which, to be fair, is still competitively low. 
Ari Denial Ari Denial
Ari is passionate about web hosting and design and has been building websites with WordPress for over ten years. When he’s not testing web hosts, you’re likely to find him trying (in vain) to train his three beagles (who are better at training him than he is them!)
1.3
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TSOHost and awful company for non technical people

Technical support is no longer available by telephone, only by on-line chat, or trouble ticket. The On-line chat is now available only Monday to Friday between 09:00 - 17:00 They are trying to price gouge me for over £50 for an SSL certificate for a blog with no e-commerce or any kind of data collection. Complete rip-off

1 avatar
Norman, Croatia
August 12, 2024
1
Never pay this company upfront!

We've paid out £736 for 12 months and have received nothing! As a long-time TSO customer, we were happy to pay upfront when they closed down a server and we had to choose an alternative. After 6 weeks of trying to get the new server to work as the old one did, we gave up as it was missing some of the essential (for us) advertised features. We pointed this out and asked for a refund. Were told that we couldn't have one as the 30 day refund period had elapsed (by about 2 weeks). Despite pointing out that the product was not as advertised and that we had gone beyond the refund period because we were working with their support trying to get it to work, they still refused to give us any refund, not even a partial refund for the remaining 8 and a half months! This is a disgusting way to treat people and I would advise you to avoid TSO like the plague. It was once a great company, but it now has poor customer service and rips people off.

1 avatar
anonymus, Great Britain
October 30, 2023
1
Used to be good but getting worse

Have been having problems recently with sent emails being flagged as spam - it looks as though the SMTP server I have with TSO is being used to pump out spam and this has resulted in it being flagged by Spamhaus. In the past, I would have called the support line (which operated on weekdays up to midnight) to flag this and ask them what would be done (and maybe to request a move to a different SMTP server). However, TSO has cut their support drastically now - you either have to raise a ticket or you can "chat online" live - but only between 9 and 5 weekdays. This is a huge reduction in support and is a big deal for me as I want to solve something quickly and evening support was very useful for resolving faults picked up during the day. When I first started with TSO (I now have 3 domains hosted with them) I'd have given them 5 stars. Not anymore.

1 avatar
Archchancellor, Great Britain
January 17, 2023
3
The worst hosting ever

This is the worst hosting ever. I am still waiting for the refund. They respond after a week. Support is basicaly no help, you need to google everything. I highly do NOT recommend. After you try to quit then they give you discounts, this is this strategy to keep the client

1 avatar
asdsadsadsa, Poland
November 20, 2022
1
refusing to Takedown Sites Stealing Content

TSOHost are disgraceful. They're hosting websites that steal content and when contacted with all the evidence and DMCA credentials, they just ignore the request. We can only assume that they are involved with these fraudsters and are supporting them. Why would anyone want to use a hosting service involved in criminal activity? They should be avoided like the plague.

1 avatar
Peter, Great Britain
September 28, 2022
1
Securi from TSOHost

Be aware that the Securi packages they try to sell you when your site gets compromised (TSO won't help if your site gets hacked) cost almost £240, and work on one domain only. If your account has 5 sites and they've all been compromised, TSO will charge you over £1,000 to clean them up. And the 30 day money back guarantee advertised with Securi is cancelled out by TSOHost's small print. If it doesnt work and clean your site as promised, you wont get your £240 back.

avatar
David, Great Britain
August 19, 2022
1
SSL and TSO

The SSL team is VERY SLOW at responding and you often need to speak to their chat support (who are excellent) to get the SSL people to respond. The SSL process I have found really cumbersome and to date has not run smoothly. Emails are vague and plentiful and confusing. And when they do respond it is a link to an article and you are expected to work it out yourself. Before you paid your £50 and they helped you. Now you just pay your £50 and do the legwork and the chasing.

avatar
Dom Knight, USA
July 23, 2021
1
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