The Demise of 123-Reg - seeking an alternative

Hi

I'm a photographer, not a web designer.

I'm based in the UK.

A couple of years ago I built my own website, registered my domain name with 123-Reg, and also purchased some hosting from 123-Reg.

Recently 123-Reg was purchased by Pipex, and subsequently their service has gone to pieces. For the last couple of weeks emails have been routinely delayed by up to 12 hours. Like most people, I often need to relay emails back and forth quite quickly, and thus have a big problem with a 12 hour delay.

123-Reg support explain that the delays are due to them switching servers. They hope to have completed this switch by October. I have no idea what switching servers entails, and maybe 3 weeks of email disruption is unavoidable. Nevertheless, I feel disgruntled and would like to move my domain names (one '.com' and one '.co.uk') away from 123-Reg. I would also like to find an alternative to 123-Reg to host my website.

As far as web hosting is concerned my requirements are negligible! My site is a bread-and-butter html portfolio website. It's not that big, and traffic is slow. Nothing complicated at all - no frames, flash, forms etc.

I was paying 123-Reg very little - £35 a year I think. I'm happy to pay significantly more for reliability (incidentally, how do you test your website's uptime?)

Most important to me is that any user interface (for managing hosting and email) is extremely user-friendy. I suspect that I'm most likely to find this with a big company (123-Reg are very good in this regard). Also need a company that will clearly guide me through the switch from 123-Reg to them.

Detailed website stats would be good. 123-Reg use Webalizer. Is that as good as it gets? I ended up using the (invisible) counters at statcounter.com instead - much better info on your visitors and their pathway through your site.

And some sort of webmail service would be very useful.

Any recommendations? (UK-based companies please)

Thanks