Web Hosting in the UK for Small Business Owners

  • UK GDPR applies
  • .co.uk and .uk domains
  • 99.9% uptime SLA

cPanel hosting for a British audience, with the currency, tax and data questions answered up front

ElySpace is not a British company and we are not going to pretend otherwise. ElySpace IT Services LLP is registered in India and sells to customers in the United Kingdom, the European Union, the United States and India. This page exists to answer the things a UK buyer actually asks before handing a website to an overseas host: which currency lands on the invoice, which law protects the personal data your forms collect, who really controls your .co.uk name, and what hour of the British day you can get a person on live chat. The platform underneath is the same one described on our shared cPanel hosting page, running LiteSpeed Enterprise, CloudLinux and NVMe SSD storage, and covered by the written 99.9% uptime SLA.

See plans and current pricing

Six checks before a UK business hosts abroad

None of these are hard, and all six are cheaper to settle before you pay than after your first renewal. Work down the list, write the answers into your supplier file, and you will be in better shape than most British small businesses are with their current host.

Currency selector icon

The currency that reaches your invoice

Pound Sterling sits in the currency selector at the top of every ElySpace page, next to US Dollar, Euro, Indian Rupee, Saudi Riyal and Bitcoin. The figure that matters, though, is the one your basket shows at my.elyspace.com immediately before you confirm the order, because that is the amount your card is charged. Read that screen rather than any marketing page, and if your finance team needs the charge to settle in GBP specifically, say so to billing before the first payment rather than after it.

Invoice and tax paperwork icon

How VAT lands on the paperwork

ElySpace IT Services LLP is established in India, not in the United Kingdom, so how VAT appears on your invoice depends on your own registration status and on the arrangement agreed with our billing team. That is a conversation to have in writing, and to forward to whoever does your books, before money moves. A hosting page cannot decide your VAT treatment for you, and any host that tells you otherwise on a landing page is guessing about your business.

Data protection law icon

Which law protects your visitors

The UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 follow the person, not the hardware. If your enquiry form collects the name of somebody in Birmingham, that record is protected by UK law wherever it is stored, and ElySpace is bound by that law as your processor. Our data protection page sets out which regimes apply to us, what our role is on each type of record, and how to lodge a request or a complaint.

Server region icon

Where the account is provisioned

Ask, do not assume, and do not accept a flag on a homepage as an answer. ElySpace operates in more than one country, and the region an account sits in is a per-product question, so get it confirmed on a ticket before you order and check it again if you later change plan. If you have a contract, a tender or an insurance policy that carries a data residency clause, raise it at the quote stage rather than the week before go-live.

Domain registry icon

Who actually controls the .uk name

Nominet is the registry for .uk and .co.uk, and the registrant record held there is what proves the name is yours, not a line item on a hosting bill. Keep the registrant email at an address you control rather than a departed web designer's mailbox, keep it separate from your hosting login, and diary the expiry. You can register or move a name through our domain registration service, and the record still stays in your name.

Clock and support hours icon

When you can reach a human

Live chat and tickets run around the clock, and the people answering them work to Indian Standard Time. IST runs five and a half hours ahead of GMT and four and a half hours ahead of British Summer Time, so a message sent at nine in the morning in Manchester arrives in the middle of the Indian working day. That overlap is the practical reason to raise anything heavy, such as a migration window or a documentation request, during the British morning.

Clock change icon

The clocks change twice

Britain moves to BST on the last Sunday in March and back to GMT on the last Sunday in October. Set the timezone explicitly in cPanel and in your CMS or your cron jobs and scheduled posts will drift by an hour twice a year.

Migration window icon

Cut over on your window

Free migration is included, and you pick the switch-over slot. Book a Tuesday morning UK time rather than a Friday afternoon, so a full British working day is still available if anything needs a second look.

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.co.uk moves by tag

A .co.uk transfer is a Nominet IPS tag change, not the auth code dance you may know from .com. It catches out first-timers every week. Start it before the hosting cutover rather than on the day itself.

Data request icon

Data requests get answered

When a UK visitor asks what you hold on them, your processor has to help. Our published process acknowledges a request within 24 hours with a ticket number and aims to resolve it within 15 days.

Moving a UK website across, step by step

Most British small business sites are a WordPress install, a handful of mailboxes and a domain someone set up years ago. Migrating that is a morning's work when the details are gathered first, and a fortnight of chasing when they are not.

01

Gather the details

Registrar login, the current host's cPanel or FTP credentials, and a written list of every mailbox in use. If you trade as a UK limited company, note the company number and registered office that must appear on the site.

02

Open the ticket

Raise a migration ticket in the client area, attach the details, and name the UK date and time you want the switch to happen. Say up front if mail is business critical, because mailboxes need a different plan to files.

03

Copy, then check

We copy files, databases and mail across and give you a temporary address to test on. Click through checkout, submit your own contact form, and send a test message to each mailbox before anything public changes.

04

Switch and watch

Nameservers change at Nominet or at your registrar, and resolvers catch up over the following hours. Keep the old account running for a fortnight so nothing arrives at an address that no longer exists.

Named parts, not adjectives

The software your account actually runs

"Fast servers" tells a buyer nothing, so here are the parts by name. LiteSpeed Enterprise serves the pages, CloudLinux keeps each account's resources fenced off from its neighbours, and cPanel with WHM is the panel you log into. Imunify360 handles malware scanning and the web application firewall, JetBackup takes the snapshots, Softaculous installs WordPress and the rest, and Let's Encrypt issues the certificates. Storage is NVMe SSD and PHP 8 comes from EasyApache. If a competitor will not name these, ask why.

  • LiteSpeed Enterprise and CloudLinux
  • cPanel and WHM, with Softaculous
  • Imunify360 plus JetBackup snapshots
  • NVMe SSD storage and PHP 8
cPanel dashboard on a laptop and a phone showing the Softaculous app installer

UK GDPR, PECR and the ICO in plain terms

Two separate rules bite on a British website. UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 govern the personal data your site collects, meaning enquiry forms, customer accounts and order history. The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations govern cookies, analytics tags and marketing email, which is why your consent banner is really a PECR question rather than a GDPR one. Both are enforced by the Information Commissioner's Office, and any UK visitor can complain to the ICO directly. Because ElySpace is established in India, sending UK personal data to us is a restricted transfer, and the UK route for that is the International Data Transfer Agreement or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses. Ask us for the transfer documentation in writing before you sign anything an auditor may later want to see, and read how we handle data protection requests first.

  • UK GDPR follows the person, not the server
  • PECR covers cookies and marketing mail
  • The ICO is who your visitors complain to
  • Get the transfer paperwork before you sign
Isometric illustration of server racks standing inside a protective shield

Questions before you buy from the UK?

Talk to a person first, not after the invoice. Ask about currency, about what your invoice will say, about the region your account will be provisioned in, and about the transfer documentation your compliance officer will want on file. Live chat and tickets are open around the clock, and the team works Indian Standard Time, which covers the whole British morning and afternoon.

Live chat, tickets and WhatsApp
Two engineers working on servers and dashboards in an isometric illustration

Read our customer reviews

That's probably enough from us, we'll let our customers do the talking and with over 2000 reviews on Trustpilot and Facebook, see for yourself why you can trust us to power your website.

UK Web Hosting FAQs

Pound Sterling is one of the six currencies listed in the currency selector at the top of the site, alongside US Dollar, Euro, Indian Rupee, Saudi Riyal and Bitcoin. The amount you are actually charged is the amount your basket shows at my.elyspace.com immediately before you confirm, so treat that screen as the authority rather than any marketing page. If your finance team needs the charge itself to settle in GBP, put that request to billing in writing before your first order rather than after your first renewal.

ElySpace IT Services LLP is registered in India rather than in the United Kingdom, so what appears on a UK customer's invoice depends on your own VAT registration status and on what is agreed with our billing team. Ask them to confirm the treatment in writing before you pay, then forward that confirmation to whoever does your books. One message now saves unpicking a year of receipts at your financial year end. We deliberately do not print a tax position on a marketing page, because it is not the same for every UK buyer.

Yes. The UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 follow the individual rather than the hardware. If your website collects the name, email address or order history of somebody in the United Kingdom, that record is protected by UK law wherever it is processed, and ElySpace is bound by those rules when it acts as your processor. Our data protection page explains which laws apply to us, where we act as a controller and where we act as a processor, and how to raise a request or a complaint.

Article 27 of the UK GDPR requires an organisation established outside the United Kingdom to appoint a UK representative unless a narrow exemption applies. ElySpace has not published the details of a UK representative, and we are not going to imply that one is in place. If your procurement or tender process needs a named UK representative before you can sign, ask us for the current position on a ticket and get the answer in writing before you order, rather than discovering the gap during an audit.

Yes. Both .uk and .co.uk appear in our domain search along with the other extensions we sell, and the registrant record stays in your name at Nominet rather than in ours. If you are moving an existing name, start the transfer a week or so before the hosting cutover so the two jobs do not collide. Keep the registrant contact email on an address you still control, because that mailbox is how you prove the name is yours if there is ever a dispute.

Nominet moves .uk names between registrars using an IPS tag, a short code identifying the registrar that manages the domain, rather than the authorisation code that .com and most other extensions use. To move a .co.uk you ask your current registrar to change the tag to the receiving registrar's tag, and the receiving registrar then accepts it. Nothing about your website or your email changes when the tag changes. It reliably catches out people who have only ever transferred a .com.

Live chat and tickets run around the clock, and the people answering them work to Indian Standard Time. IST is five and a half hours ahead of GMT and four and a half hours ahead of British Summer Time, so nine in the morning in London is early afternoon in India, while five in the evening in London is late at night there. For anything that needs a considered answer, such as a migration plan or a compliance question, send it during the British morning.

That depends on the region your account is provisioned in, which is exactly why we tell UK buyers to ask rather than to trust a flag on a homepage. Once you know, measure it instead of taking anyone's word for it: load the site from a UK connection and compare it against what you have now. Static assets are served through Cloudflare's global edge, which shortens the trip for images, stylesheets and scripts, but the first byte of a dynamic page still comes from wherever the account sits.

Ask before you order. A data processing agreement, and the transfer mechanism that sits alongside it for a restricted transfer out of the United Kingdom, is the paperwork your auditor or your own enterprise client will eventually ask to see. It is far easier to obtain at the quote stage than after go-live. Raise it on a ticket, describe what your contract or your insurer requires, and get the response in writing. If the answer does not meet your obligations, it is much better to learn that before you migrate.

This is standard cPanel hosting, so the answer depends far more on how you take the money than on the plan you buy. Most British small shops use a hosted gateway, where card details are entered on the payment provider's own page and never touch your server, which usually keeps you on the lightest self assessment questionnaire. Never store card numbers on shared hosting. If your store is busy or heavily customised, look at our online store hosting instead.

Ready to move your British site across?

Plans, terms and the current figure in your chosen currency all live in the store, where the basket shows exactly what you will be charged before you confirm. If you would rather settle the currency, invoicing and data protection questions first, open a ticket and we will answer them in writing.

Free migration, on a window that suits your working day

Our migration team moves files, databases and mailboxes for you, and you pick the cutover slot in UK time. Send us the current host's details and the list of mailboxes, test everything on a temporary address, and only then point the nameservers. Compare what you get against our standard shared hosting plans and, if you sell online, against hosting built for online shops.

Browse plans in the store
ElySpace client area migration request form with the destination website selected