Why is speed important?

Faster hosting gives you that all important edge over your competition. It delivers the satisfying user experience that makes customers continually return and it plays an important part in getting you to the top of Google listings. Google's Communications & Public Affairs department states: "It's fair to say that a speedy site will rank better (it's true for adverts, as well)."

In a recent report by Forrester it states 47 per cent of web visitors expect a web page to load in just 2 seconds or less (0.5 secs faster than in 2006). It's a fact As Google Vice President Marissa Mayer stated in her last Web 2.0 Conference "speed matters. People do not like to wait. Do not make them".

Google states 'speed wins'

Google wants to deliver a strong customer experience, so it rewards websites that help it to achieve this. Part of this means valuing loading speed of pages, particularly the landing page from Google listed adverts. Google will score a slow loading page lower and this in turn costs you, the advertiser, more. So it is imperative to include speedy servers in your SEM strategy.

Google places speed high on their agenda in many different areas, including its own search engine browser. "Making the web faster continues to be our main area of focus," states Darin Fisher on the Google Chrome blog. "We've increased our focus on speed."

So what will make 79% of customers return to your website? Well it's easy to see why web users become impatient and why speed attracts visitors; and the quickest route to delivering a fast loading website is through your hosting. Chose a hosting provider with a super fast network.

How is UKFast the fastest hosting provider?

We are consistently rated the fastest by independent testers Webperf. Plus our servers are located directly on the main UK network hub. We also aggregate bandwidth access from the leading suppliers and operate multiple failover network routes. Furthermore, we only use the best server equipment and our state of the art data centres apply the most efficient hardware.

So we are strategically and technologically positioned to offer the ultimate in speed and reliability. Find out more about our network speed.

UKFast has a proven track record of boosting the traffic of client's sites. Our network has recently accelerated the growth of one client's traffic by 740%. Read about How-Do's traffic increase.

How-Do experience a 740% traffic increase with UKFast hosting

How-Do offers news, opinion and resources for those working in all aspects of media in the North West. The Website launched at the end of March 2007 and it now boasts over 40,000 unique users.

With demand high from the beginning How-Do got off to a great start. However, it soon became apparent that the initial hosting provider could not deliver the reliability of service to support the website's rapid growth.

"My previous hosting provider was just too unreliable. With them my website would go offline at least once a week. My business could not grow in those conditions," How-Do owner Nick Jaspan states.

Thanks to the reliability and speed of a UKFast entry-level server How-Do flourished in early 2008. The website experienced an extraordinary increase in traffic as users responded to the quick and reliable service provided by the UKFast solution.

The improvement was so successful that the How-Do website needed to be upgraded to a more comprehensive dedicated server in May 2008 to cope with demand.

The graph opposite is from independent online search intelligence company Hitwise, and shows a massive jump in traffic at the time of the inital move to UKFast and then again in May to correspond to the transition to a dedicated server.

How-Do's success continues, crucially underpinned by its dependable UKFast server hardware and the constant efficient and friendly expert support.

"I would not hesitate to recommend UKFast, their speed and reliability has been excellent," Nick Jaspan.

A robust and rapid network

You can see from the graph below that our network speed stands out from the crowd and that means our clients stand out from their competitors.

The UKFast network offers unrivalled speed because we are on the main hub of the UK system and we aggregate bandwidth access from the leading suppliers.

Unlike any other hosting provider, the UKFast network was carefully built from the ground-up in accordance with a unique and highly effective design. Like Google, our secret formula has remained classified, ensuring that our customers receive a significant competitive edge over their rivals.

Independent testing by Webcop shows that during Sept 2009 UKFast's network out performed leading competitors.

Key features of UKFast's Network:

• 2 x 1Gb Fibre
• 8 x 1Gb Transit Links
• 5 x 1Gb Peering points
• 3 x 100Mb Peering points
• Intelligent routing of bandwidth
• Real-time visual traffic graphs
• UPS
• Advanced server monitoring
• Port monitoring
• SMS advanced alert system
• State of the art, secure data centres

Security

We implement state-of-the-art firewall and anti-virus technology on every solution that goes far beyond industry standards. In fact our innovative PROprotection service delivers a new benchmark of security to qualifying clients not previously seen in the hosting industry.

Support

Our expert Linux and Windows technicians are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Their award-winning service ensures your business is optimised to maximise potential at all times without downtime or delay.

Together with the speed of our network, they give you the competitive edge in your marketplace.

Example server specifications

We have a wide range of high speed dedicated servers available, below are examples of our most popular. Please call UKFast specialist hosting advisors to discuss the right server for you.

	vega 3100 Dell	vega 3200 Dell	spica 4205 Dell
Processor	Core2Duo 2.66GHz	Core2Duo 2.66GHz	2 x Quad Core Xeon E5506 2.13GHz
Memory	3 GB DDR2 RAM	4 GB DDR2 RAM	8 GB DDR2 RAM
Storage	2 x 250GB SATA2 RAID1	2 x 500GB SATA2 RAID1	3 x 146GB SAS RAID 5
Protection	PROprotection	PROprotection	PROprotection
Windows Platform	Server 2003 Web Server 2003 Standard Server 2008 Data Centre Server 2008 Enterprise Server 2008 Standard Server 2008 Web	Server 2003 Web Server 2003 Standard Server 2008 Data Centre Server 2008 Enterprise Server 2008 Standard Server 2008 Web	Server 2003 Web Server 2003 Standard Server 2008 Data Centre Server 2008 Enterprise Server 2008 Standard Server 2008 Web
Linux Flavours	Red Hat Enterprise Fedora CentOS Debian Ubuntu	Red Hat Enterprise Fedora CentOS Debian Ubuntu	Red Hat Enterprise Fedora CentOS Debian Ubuntu
Recommendation	Small Business	Large Website	Mission critical ecommerce