Having tried out quite a few web hosts I think that Heart Internet are currently the best UK web hosting company for multiple WordPress sites.

Here’s a list of the main things I like about their Reseller Hosting for hosting WP sites primarily. Everything is optional and free unless stated.

1. Price is decent at less than £30 per month. Discounts if you pay anually
2. Unlimited Domains, Accounts, Storage and Bandwidth (subject to fair usage – same as everyone else)
3. Create different hosting package configurations to assign to clients
4. Brandable control panels
5. Integrated support ticket system for your customers
6. Renewal reminder system for each account domain
7. Gmail and Google Apps DNS checkboxes for auto setup on domains
8. One click WP install – obviously
9. Price Freeze – Your account never increases during the term of contract
10. Support ticketing system (see below)
11. You can upgrade and use custom nameservers. Costs £100 per year - but domain bling is cool!
12. Customer database you can send out bulk emails via ie to notify of offers etc
13. Decide what if anything customers can access in their own control panel area
14. HostPay is a shopping cart system to let customers buy or renew services directly through their account
15. Personalised SSL certificates are reasonable at £149 per year

I actually looked at using Heart Internet quite a few years back and the thing which put me off was the fact that they didn’t (and still don’t) offer phone support.

The fact is though that even with the other hosts we use it’s rarely something I ever want to use now as the ticketing systems are so much more efficient nowadays.

I’ve contacted Heart support about a few things, and sometimes just to test their support reliability in the middle of the night with non urgent issues, and I’ve never had a single response to a new ticket take more than 10 minutes. Normally once a ticket is open replies back to updates are practically instant as they must be monitored in real time for updates.

The only 2 annoying things are that new hosting accounts take up to 1 hour to set up. I don’t know why they take that long but it’s not something that will impact too much as it’s rare you ever NEED an account up and running in less time than that.

The other thing is that if they host a domain you can only 302 redirect it to another URL rather than choose a 301 option. To do this you have to actually set up a new account then 301 the domain using htaccess or php script. Why this is the case I have no idea but hopefully they will take my feature request into consideration shortly

Other than these points they are pretty solid and my only preference to Dream Host over Heart Internet is just my familiarity with the layout of the control panels.

They offer a 30 day back gurantee and even after this period you only have to give 3 days notice to cancel so you can try them out quite easily for yourself.

Let me know how you get on or what you think if you currently use them.