A web hosting question

[April]

I've been happily using Bluehost for my personal site for the past six months, and my boss has asked me to upgrade his website. Since it's hosted by the developers, I will need to move the site to a new host before I can do any work on it.

I can't use Bluehost because he wants:
- a dedicated, managed hosting solution
- a British-based one so if there are any problems, we can call at times we're already awake

Other important info:
- small business, no e-commerce requirement
- need a very basic CMS, but perhaps something that's extensible
- needs to be Linux/Unix-based as we're using php


I've never needed to look into dedicated managed hosting before, and I know very little about it in general. With Bluehost, I get the cPanel and all sorts of freebies with it. Does this not apply to dedicated hosting?

Any advice?:confused:

[Early Out]

By "dedicated," I'm assuming he means "not shared hosting." In other words, his site will have its own server ("dedicated") or at least a virtual one ("VPS" or "virtual private server"). BH doesn't offer this option yet (no word on when, but it's planned).

Of course, any host worth the money has 24x7 support, so the "British" part of it really shouldn't be relevant.

[April]

Yep, not shared hosting. Indeed, BH do not offer it, which is a pity because I like using them.

However, two things:
1. If it's a US company with 24/7 support, would we still need to dial a US number (this may actually be my boss' motivation for staying local)?
2. The cPanel thing...if it's not shared, do you still get one?

Thanks for your reply, Early Out.

[Early Out]

The cPanel will be a function of what web host you choose, so it's tough to say whether it'll be offered or not. But if you're paying for a dedicated host, I'm guessing you'll be given a pretty good set of tools to use. You might not see something like SimpleScripts, however.

Phone support to the U.S. is a problem, since toll-free numbers don't apply for overseas calls.

I just Googled for dedicated hosting UK, and it looks like there are lots of options out there, with Live Chat lines for asking questions about what they offer. Some of them specifically mention cPanel (I stumbled on one pretty quickly - http://www.ukdedicated.com - but I have no idea whether they're any good or not).

[April]

Thanks for that. It's great to know cPanel should be offered with some tools so I'll keep my eye out for that in particular. If anyone has any feedback about that company or any others, I'd love to hear it. I've heard great things about Rackspace, but I can't see any CMS pre-installed with their small business package (I guess I could always install one myself....).