If anyone is thinking of hosting their own site, don't go to these guys.

I was with Fasthosts but they were absolutely terrible; their control panel should be called an 'additional options for an additional charge panel', everything costs extra. MYSQL database= £50 per year extra, MSSQL= £250 per year extra, server stats cost £10 per year extra, every kind of extra costs more money. Some of you may have noticed that this site ran like a dying dog and their mysql made this forum run even worse. Their support is abysmal where the staff you e-mail to never actually directly answer your questions but point you to a file on their web-site that isn't remotely helpful. I even wrote in one e-mail asking if they could truly help me out rather than point me to a file to read, they replied that unfortunately they could not! I rang their £1 per minute scripting helpline out of desperation who told me they couldn't really help, giving me a number to ring that never answered.

They advertise their cheap hosting with optional extras for a small additional charge, I don't call doubling your yearly cost a small additional charge, not to mention multiplying it by 5 or 6 times. I did pay the £50 for mysql because I needed my board to work and thought it may be worth it if they are really fast and reliable. They weren't, so I asked for my money back yesterday; they gave me the £60 I originally paid for a year's hosting and domain registration but said they could not give me back the £50 I paid for MYSQL because it was an optional extra, as if that made all the sense in the world. I've paid £50 for a database for a year and only used it for one week, I can't get my money back for it and I can't use it either as all my account stuff has been deleted since I cancelled my subscription.

Anyway, I'm with Burton Hosting now and everything runs like a dream; you get everything they say you get with no additional extra costs, their control panel really is a control panel and not a shopping basket. They even have it set up so you can just click 'bulletin board' and it sets up the board for you with you as the administrator and all the files in the right place. There is so much free stuff to use on the control panel I haven't got around to looking at it all yet. I imagine that this is normal with a lot of hosts but I've only been to Fasthosts before this, so it all seems fantastic!

Seems their crapness is not exactly unheard of: Bad Fasthosts, this actually comes up on page one of a Google search for fasthosts.

Thanks, they are the worst business I've ever dealt with; even worse than CCS Land Rovers