Not a Compila crap. (compila.com)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	compila.com
Date:	20/06/06 (1088 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reliable hosting company with excellent customer service.

Disadvantages: Ummm... web stats take up LOADS of web space.

I didn't have a choice when choosing Compila as the hosting company for the website I now operate. From what I understand, the original owner of Opinionators.co.uk, Andy Mack, had asked a few acquaintances regarding the hosts they'd used for their own sites. Compila seemed to get quite a few favourable responses and so Andy chose Compila.

My own experiences of Compila first came into play when Andy decided he couldn't dedicate the time to running Opinionators any more and I offered to step in, rather than let the site die. Andy agreed to this, so we set about transferring the account.

We both had to contact Compila to ask for the account to be transferred to my name. This was done with little fuss and the account details were listed in my name quite quickly. One problem that did arise was, when emailing me the login details for the account, sent out the wrong ones, but a quick email (once the problem had been identified) soon put that right.

Compila offers both Microsoft and Linux hosting at a decent cost (Microsoft is for asp.net hosting and Linux is for php-based hosting). For example, the 'Bargain' hosting plan that I use is £19 + VAT per year and that'll get you (at time of writing) 250MB of storage space, a UK domain name, 2 x MySQL databases (especially handy if you're planning on running a blog or message board etc.), unmetered bandwidth (i.e. data transfer) and plenty of other options such as email support, email accounts (and associated features) and a whole host of extras.

For example, if you were looking to run a message board, you'd investigate which message board system you wished to use. Once you have made your decision, then select the required hosting plan. A phpBB message board (probably the most popular message board system) uses, as you might guess from the name, php. In this case you'd plump for a Linux hosting plan of some description.

The feature list is extremely competitive compared to other, 'big name' hosting companies such as 'Fasthosts' or 'One and One', which look to be more expensive for comparable hosting plans.

My own experiences with Compila have been nothing less than incredibly positive. In the year that I've owned the Opinionators.co.uk account, I've not encountered any serious issues with Compila from a technical point of view. There was one occasion where the site was running quite slow for a few days (although it was still usable), but an email to the Technical Support department solved the problem. Compila moved my site to a new server and sent an email of explanation, letting me know what they'd done.

I have contacted Compila with technical queries outside of any problems I had regarding my site/hosting, and Compila have always answered promptly, with a nice, friendly tone.

When renewing the account recently, I had a few queries regarding the status of the account. Compila's renewals department sorted everything out eventually, although it did require quite a few emails back and forth to answer my questions. While I thought I was perhaps being a bit thick with the questions I was asking, the Renewals Department showed a lot of patience.

Contact in general with Compila is excellent. Emails are given a ticket number, irrespective of which department you contact and you get an auto-response immediately which at least lets you know your email has been received. The best thing, though, is that I've always had a proper reply within a few hours during normal business hours. From memory, the sales and renewal departments work the normal business hours (i.e. Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.), but the technical support department seems to be a 24-hour a day operation. Note: some contact options are only open to certain types of account owners. My own 'Bargain' plan gives me 24-hour a day email access to the Tech Support dept, although if you own a 'Starter' plan, you might be forced to call during business hours instead.

In order to help you manage your account, Compila offers a range of tools and information through a web-based control panel called Cpanel (a well known control panel for site hosting). From here, you can change your email options, make backups, view all sorts of visitor information etc. It can be quite complicated initially (I've only used a small fraction of the features available), but is quite easy to grasp and you'll soon be able to keep track of what happens on and around your site with ease. Some of the tools are very handy, but I have found that the visitor information takes up a huge amount of your personal web space, so be sure to (backup and) delete these regularly.

As I've explained above, my experiences with Compila have all been positive. Any technical questions or issues have been dealt with extremely quickly and without fuss. Email replies have all been within an acceptable period of time, often less than a few hours. This is well within the 24-hour time frame that I believe businesses should aim for when replying to customers, and Compila get bonus points for that. Overall, I have no hesitation in recommending Compila as a hosting company, especially if you are considering their Linux hosting plans as, based on personal experience, they've been fantastic to me over the past year.

Summary: Reliable hosting company with excellent customer service.