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Review summary

Full review

This UK-based hosting service may have had a rocky period recently but service appears to be back up and running on an efficient basis now. Established in 2001 and offering a range of value-for-money plans, Nativespace has carved out a space for itself in the web hosting market. We looked closely at Nativespace’s features to see what exactly you get for your investment.

Hosting

With a range of different plans on offer – not too many to make sense of and not too few that you feel limited in choice – Nativespace has something to offer personal users, plus small and large businesses. The Premier Plan from Nativespace is the first one on the menu and includes 500MB of storage and 5GB of data transfer for around £3.11 a month. This is not a huge amount of space and transfer but the price represents good value. The Professional Plan is about £1.00 more expensive each month but for this extra cash you get 1,500MB storage space and 15 GB transfer. The Business Plan is around £10.13 a month and provides 2,500MB storage and 25GB data transfer. While some service providers offer the ability to host several domains under one plan, Nativespace has a separate multi-domain package on offer where you can host sites for around 55p each a month, depending on how many you have. All the plans are currently offering the first month of hosting free.

Nativespace gives good coding and development opportunities – the cheapest package allows for two MySQL databases and PostgreSQL databases, and the range of add-ons that are compatible with the system is extensive. The Fantastico Deluxe system allows you to install extra packages such as osCommerce, Mambo or Joomla with relative ease – the shopping cart addition is useful as it is available even on the basic plan. You can choose from one of three recommended packages for accepting online payments and managing an inventory of products. Also add image galleries, polls, surveys, mailing lists, ads, chat rooms, guest books, and more. You won’t lack opportunities to give your site a personal look or increase the functionality of your web presence – Nativespace is a good choice for extensive development opportunities. For those without a website already functioning, Nativespace includes site builder tools (Templates Express) and templates for creating a website from scratch.

In terms of security and reliability, Nativespace offers six-hourly continuous data protection backups, and storage on an eight-core CPU 64-bit Hewlett Packard server located in London, firewall protection, spam filters and virus protection. The company claims that by offering limited bandwidth they ensure that no-one overuses the service, slowing down speed and performance for everyone else. In addition, Nativespace operates a carbon offsetting policy for greener web hosting, something that other providers simply don’t offer.

Domains

Get your domains sorted out with the service provided by Nativespace. You can transfer domains you already own or purchase domains easily through the Nativespace network – no need for any other outside help.

Email

The email service provided with the Nativespace plans is robust enough for any small or large business, and the personal user gets 25 email boxes to play with. With the Premier Plan you get 25 email boxes, the Professional Plan 100, and the Business Plan unlimited email boxes.

Marketing & reporting

A range of marketing and reporting tools come together with the Nativespace packages so you can track who is visiting your website, where they come from, and where they go once they are there. Numerous add-ons are easily installed if you want more comprehensive statistics packages or marketing help.

Ease of use

The cPanel system is an advanced control panel that is also easy to use – with Nativespace beginners can easily get started with the web hosting process. If you want a functioning website online quickly you can use the Templates Express system that puts a professional website on the internet in a few hours. Once you have installed your template the process of updating the site is easy with FTP access. For more experienced users, the Fantastico De Luxe system is also simple to navigate and allows you to add PHP scripts with just a few clicks.

Help & support

The Nativespace support options are not as comprehensive as some others on the market but the service is courteous and professional. To get in touch there is a short enquiry form to fill out and an email support address for technical problems. And in one section of the website is a support desk that issues tickets which are answered within an hour. Support is personal rather than template-driven and experts are employed to give you the answers you need.

Overall

A full set of features in one easy to use package – Nativespace is a web hosting service provider worth looking at. Another point in Nativespace’s favour is that the plans are scalable and can easily grow as your company grows – you are not locked into a limited plan.

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2. Go Daddy
3. Nativespace
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6. Just Host
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