Web and Email hosting
Web Hosting Services
We've been providing web hosting services on Linux for a long time, mostly using Apache - which has evolved slowly to support new features but remains reliable and robust and is an ideal workhorse for most purposes. We also sometimes setup nginx (Engine X) for clients with specific requirements where Apache module overheads have an impact on performance. We also support pure RESTful API servers written in Node.js or similar, although even these are usually proxied via Apache or nginx for ease of management.
Most standard web sites don't require a great deal of specific Apache configuration and if you're using Wordpress or Magento or some other CMS then you'll get .htaccess override rights to set up any additional local configuration you need for SEO purposes or whatever. We can however offer custom Apache or nginx setups if required (usually only on dedicated servers).
So how can we help you with Web Hosting?
Due to the absence of control panels (mentioned elsewhere) if you require web hosting for a single site then we'll do all the setup for this for you and send you secure FTP (or on dedicated servers SSH) access details as required. Usually once a site is set up very few configuration changes are needed but if you do need something special doing just email us and we'll sort it out.
We can also set up MariaDB/MySQL databases for web sites with phpMyAdmin if required. Or for special purposes we've set up PostgreSQL and Oracle in the past, or MongoDB for those who don't like SQL. Various database mirroring/backup options are available for data-critical sites.
Whatever your requirements please get in touch for an exploratory discussion.
Email hosting services
We offer a fairly basic email service using open source tools on Linux. It does the job and offers facilities like account management, spam filtering and webmail, but a lot of people may prefer the more streamlined services offered by Google, Microsoft and the like which we can help you to set up if you like.
For a long time Sendmail was the default mail program for Linux distributions. This is a software monolith, renowned for the regularity of its security patches and its fiendishly complex configuration rules, with a syntax so obscure they had to write a separate macro language to help people update the config file. Fortunately more modern distros seem to have ditched Sendmail in favour of Postfix, which is a more accessible alternative.
For our shared and dedicated mail servers though we still prefer Qmail. This has been around for a long time (at least 20 years) and is dismissed by some because it has hardly been updated in all that time. But the truth is that it doesn't really need updating because it just works. There have been a few patches relating to changes in encryption standards, but that's about it.
Qmail is a bit of a headache to install as not many distributions bundle it as standard (probably because of the aforementioned lack of updates!) however there is an excellent Qmail Toaster site (qmailtoaster.net) should you want to do a DIY install.
Mail Server Options
Our basic Shared mail servers offer up to 10 accounts for a single domain with a Qmailadmin control panel for account maintenance. This enables you to do basic things like set up forwards and vacation messages, and apparently even allows you to run mail robots - although I'm not sure anyone actually uses that in practice as there are much simpler alternatives! The mail service will work with most common mail clients like Outlook, Thunderbird, Mac Mail and mobile phone mail apps - although some of these require more persistence to set up than others. There is also a basic webmail service if you really need it.
We also offer Dedicated mail servers. These run the same Qmail setup as shared servers but obviously you have the machine's IP address to yourself so you are less likely to be impacted by reputation issues arising from spam from unrelated accounts on the same IP. Also a dedicated server can handle multiple domains and unlimited accounts per domain within the same monthly cost (subject to overall disk space constraints). You can also have things like a dedicated DKIM signature and we are open to assisting with other custom setup within reason.
Call Us Today
Whatever your IT or server requirements contact our experts today for a free no obligation discussion.