Hosting UK Reviews 2.232

My business has been using HostinkUK for at least 20 years. They are very reliable and offer a great cost-effective service.
I'd been having an issue with my email. Customer services guided me - a clueless technophobe, through the process of fixing the issue and getting me up an running.

Ann was wonderful and helpful and sorted our domain issue. Thank you so much.

Problems are usually fixed pretty quickly, even at weekends. I would like more reasons given for when problems do arise, though

At the original time of writing HostingUK was still in the middle of dealing with the April/May 2026 CVE-2026-41940 authentication bypass 0-day affecting cPanel/WHM, hadn't directly contacted customers where sites and email accounts were compromised, which it still hasn't, and was apparently not letting support staff answer questions about whether it was safe to change passwords and continue using key services like email that are a high risk for identity and financial fraud, from the first reply I received.

Personally I had to discover what had happened due to missing website images, and it wasn't clear if the missing files were encrypted by ransomware (README.md files were left) and then removed by HostingUK or by attackers. But it's an inconsequential site, whereas email and things connected to that obviously aren't unimportant for anyone. Also, it may not have mattered due to the specific vulnerability but although their support site uses 2FA, HostingUK cPanel/webmail don't appear to support it currently and it isn't a default, which in this day and age it should be. I appreciate that in order to enable it for the environment it would be implemented for other customers, but it's still important to have modern security features and getting to a position where it can be enabled in WHM would give customers confidence to be able to use webmail, whereas without 2FA it isn't safe to use from environments that can't be completely trusted, e.g. someone else's computer or hotel wifi or in a browser that could have an extension installed that becomes compromised.

HostingUK is also in the process of migrating customer domains to Easyspace, under the Iomart group they're both part of, forcing a 60-day lock on transfers that will limit the ability of customers to migrate out. It might still be possible to point domains at another email provider that does implement 2FA, for example, but when you know that a hosting account has been breached is not the best time to be working out options.

It's all extremely messy and for a largish provider they seemed a bit unprepared when things really hit the fan with a global incident, needing to call staff in over a bank holiday weekend because customers were affected before mitigations could be made, etc. Most customers are unlikely to be aware of or understand the extent of the cPanel compromise, but assuming a reasonable worst-case scenario any data stored will have been taken, all credentials can no longer be relied on, all linked third-party sites/services that don't have their own MFA arrangements are vulnerable, and there's scope for impersonation from genuine accounts. It's a really nasty vulnerability rated 9.8 out of 10 in CVSS terms and "critical" by global security authorities.

I should add that even if things seem fine on your website, with this host or another, reports are that the cPanel vulnerability existed long before it and related software were patched so the exposure to sites having data stolen and back doors introduced is massive, and obviously this affects many more hosts internationally and millions of people and domains. HostingUK technical support staff are generally great, never any problem with them, and I've been with the company since they acquired UnitedHosting/PlugSocket, my concern is that management haven't been communicating with customers directly, and may have delayed disabling sites/services as would have been appropriate with an exploit becoming known to be in the wild that grants full access to and control of servers. With full authentication bypasses like that, the only immediate measure that can be taken is to turn things off until patches are available and applied, and unfortunately that didn't happen.

The situation with 2FA not being an option is something I hope will be looked at further, because like TLS it's a normal base level of security now and relying on just passwords is risky.

Edit 7th May: I'm not sure what's changed, but the 2FA feature has been made available, which uses OTP codes from a standard authenticator app. Hopefully that gives a route for other customers to also use it and keep themselves better protected. In other respects, as I say, HostingUK technical support is very good. I appreciate it can be a difficult judgement call to switch things off during security incidents, or balance messaging to not scare people off, and I think management would be best advised to reach out to customers to say that things are patched, recommend changing passwords as a precaution in this instance because there's been a known serious vulnerability, and promote their security practices including offering 2FA on account interfaces.

Great service from HostingUK. I had a recent issue with my email and I received excellent support. Very quickly they identified the problem , nothing is a problem to these guys. Many thanks for helping my business !!

Always get rapid and helpful service. Much better support than any other domain host I have used.

Fast response and helpful online team supporting

Shane was great help, he helped with very well and i am grateful for it

Once I remembered how to ask for support the process was very simple and Hosting resolved my query within one hour.

Contacted Technical Support because my domains were down (no emails, no website). Received a response in less than 15 minutes to confirm the issue was due to a protective firewall block after several failed email account login attempts. Technical Support unblocked the server and offered guidance around email account checks for me to carry out. Very impressed yet again by the excellent fast, effective support from Hosting UK.

Clearly regaining access to Mail etc. on a new device was the number one issue.
I actually learned a few things during the process!

Remember to be patient as instructions, testing, changes etc. are carried out. Not every fix is instant!

Year after year, support is friendly, fast and accurate. This is a gold-star experience. I have used Hosting UK for more than 20 years now.

Efficient, quick in response and always at the end of the phone. I spoke with Peter who is in the sales department initially and he knew who I needed to be talking to with regard to transferring my email hosting over within Hosting Uk as well as checking in every step of the way during the process.

Sean in the technical department was incredible at problem solving and was very consistent and clear within the proposed solutions as well as always replying to my technical questions in very good time with exact information to successfully transfer my email hosting over! Great team and service!

We have an important site with Hosting UK which is essential for the running of our company. Hosting UK servers have been down since 9.08 this morning and came back online at 17.01. That is a full day of productivity lost for around 25 members of our team. This will result in significant costs to our business and we will of course be moving our sites away from this company. Clearly Hosting UK’s redundancy and recovery systems are not good enough. No answers minimal comms, not a good outfit if you rely on your websites.

Excellent service!

Always great customer support, even over Easter weekend. Reliable service and helpful staff with decent prices. Been with them for over two decades.