Our Second European Datacenter is Now Live in London
Our first data center location in Amsterdam has been serving our European clients quite well over the last few years. However, our strategy to constantly enhance our service urged us to look for more datacenter locations throughout the continent. Each new location we add allows us to deliver better performance and localized service to a certain group of our clients.
We are happy to announce that as of this week all our shared and cloud hosting plans are also available from our new datacenter in London. London has come up as the second best datacenter location given its infrastructure and connectivity and we hope that clients who get a significant part of their traffic from the UK will experience an improvement of the overall performance of their websites.
Note: Currently, we do not offer dedicated servers in London, but they will be available at a later stage.
Comments ( 45 )
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Ryan
As a customer who has many clients in England, this is AWESOME news!
Mark Barnes
How do we move existing sites to the new datacentre?
Kiril Hristov
Hi Mark. In your SiteGround User Area, go to the Add Services tab. In the extras section you'll see - Move to other data center. Once you post a request, our tech team will handle the relocation of your data.
Yosh
the next one in Spain please!
Ewan
+1 for Spain next!
Kiril Hristov
Thanks for your suggestions :)
Joan
me too!
Dave
We are based in Ireland (www.books.ie) and the London datacenter is a great plus for us. Went to go change our sever location but there is a charge. Maybe next year..
Brian Best
It's only £20. I Moved everything from Amsterdam to London and the process was quick and pain free.
Dave
Wow, that's awesome! I was just thinking of hosting in London or Amsterdam (already have a cloud server in Chicago that I love), and there you guys go... adding London! Always on top of your game :) What's the mix of networks you use for London vs. Amsterdam? Do you have an IP to test? Is the hardware used any newer? Honestly, while I love having the choice, I realize that the millisecond difference from UK to Amsterdam vs UK to London itself might not be that extreme, and Amsterdam has better privacy rules. That said, I love that you guys are in London itself and it's certainly worth testing out. In all of the years I've been online, I've never seen such an easy to use MANAGED host with a great, modern stack. Usually to use the new tech means you have to DIY, which I'd prefer to not to do. We're all lucky to have the choice, even though it may be a bit like splitting hairs ultimately. haha Thank you
Kiril Hristov
Hi Dave and Thanks so much for your kind words. You can test out the networks with these IPs: Amsterdam: 198.20.98.2 London: 5.10.97.132 Regarding the hardware used, it's exactly the same. Hope that helps!
Fraz
Great news. If we relocate, will there be any downtime for emails and website for Cloud users with dedicated IPs?
Kiril Hristov
Hi Fraz. You shouldn't experience any downtime when relocating. If your domains are pointed to your dedicated IPs with A records, no DNS change will be required. Otherwise, if a DNS change is required, our tech team can do a redirect and propagation time should not be an issue. When requesting relocation, it posts a ticket. You can ask our tech team for more info there, but they should give it to you anyway.
Greg
awesome. Any plans for France?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Sorry for the late reply, hopefully we will have more data centers in Europe but I am afraid I cannot tell you any ETA or whether we will have one in France for sure.
and
do you have the same infrastructure as described here by you? https://www.siteground.com/blog/next-generation-container-based-shared-hosting/ or is it something way slower? thank you
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, the same technology is applied on all servers and it shouldn't be slower unless your ISP has worse connectivity to that data center.
Kim
Hi Hristo I just testet Ping time from Denmark and as far as I can see London is about 30% slower here from Denmark then Amsterdam, can you confirm that ? //Kim
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Not really. The ping and connection speeds greatly depend on many circumstances including your own ISP provider, the route to the datacenter, etc. Someone across your street may experience the connection to both data centers on the exactly oposite way.
JB
Good news. Additionally, are you able to advise which data center / provider and, whether "London" is marketing for somewhere in the UK? Thanks
Daniel Kanchev Siteground Team
The data center is in London and is owned by SoftLayer.
James
I just moved my hosting plans from Amsterdam to London. However I was told via LiveChat Support that London isn’t using SSDs yet. You have said the hardware is the same. Who is right? Does London use SSDs for shared hosting or not?
Daniel Kanchev Siteground Team
I've checked the case and I can confirm that the shared servers in London use SSDs. If you need more information please post a support ticket via our ticketing system.
nawapol
I love chat system of siteground because i have problem, siteground can support soon. Excellence. Thank you siteground team
James
Thank you Daniel. JB if you refer to The Register you can see an article about the data centre, which is located in Chessington. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/30/ibm_promises_mainframes_on_tap_softlayer_lands_on_london/ It is stretching it a bit to call Chessington as London. However I can see there would be some strategic benefits from being located outside the city area with regard to security incidents. I host some of my other sites at a data centre in Kent called The Bunker and the non-city status is regarded as an asset.
Kiril Hristov
Hi James. It is common practice for data centers to be located at city outskirts. They are very large in size and require specific infrastructure in terms of network, power, security as you said yourself. Finding everything needed in a dense urban area would be difficult and unnecessary. Also, the latency difference between such a short distance is inconsiderable.
James
Kiril, I wasn’t criticising, just providing further information for JB. There are many data centres in Central London: Interxion, Volta, Telehouse, Telecity, etc.
Kiril Hristov
Didn't catch that. Thanks, James. :)
Jay
Does relocating mean we are going to be paying more? Like we now have to pay VAT on top of what we always pay? Especially as I'm not VAT registered?
Kiril Hristov
Hi Jay. Changing the data center used to host your site is not at all related to VAT charging. VAT is charged because EU tax law requires providers of electronic services to collect VAT from customers located in EU countries. So, if you as a customer are located in the UK, we are required by law to always charge you VAT. It makes no difference which one of our data centers you choose to use for your site.
Sarah
No, this is not quite right. We UK customers have just been told that we will be charged VAT on top of our existing charges with immediate effect. That is apparently because we are being handed over to a UK subsidiary of SiteGround rather than the original, Panama registered company we signed up with. So if you're not registered for VAT - and that's almost every UK business with a turnover of less than £82,000 per year - your bill just went up by 20% without notice. Somebody didn't think this through.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
EU tax law requires all providers of electronic services to collect VAT from customers located in EU countries. If you as a customer are located in the UK, we are required by law to charge you VAT. It does not matter where we are located as a provider.
Luca Sabato
Good to know, i think this is a very good news for me :) Thanks Siteground :)
Barry Krite
Can one selectively choose which data centre is used for each domain on an account?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Data center can be chosen per account during the sign-up process or you can order a relocation afterwards. However, if you have multiple domains in one account, they will all be palced in the same data center.
Howard
I don't know if this is related to the migration or not but suddenly neither me nor many other people who use my client side database front end can reach the mysql database held at Siteground via port 3306. In fact I can't remotely reach any of my databases at siteground any more on any account. I've opened a ticket and so far have been told it the fault of my own ISP ! (ignoring the facts that all the other users are with different ISPs and that I can still reach databases that are not hosted at Siteground.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
The issues you're experiencing aren't related to the changes we've made recently. Please, contact our support by posting a ticket in your Help Desk and my colleagues will assist you further.
Abdullah
Please add a server in Riyadh or Dubai to serve Middle East and North Africa They are many companies in GCC seeks a high end data center like SiteGround
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for the suggestion, we will consider it when we start planning our next data center.
Catalin Radu
I am in Romania. I want to buy GrowBig plan. Do you recommend Amsterdam or London as data center ? Witch would be best for my country ?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Amsterdam should be better for you since it's closer phisically to Romania.
Zee
I am in Dubai. Which datacenter is recommended for me? I want my website to be super fast.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I think the Amsterdam datacenter should be the best choice for you.
Abdullah
Please add a date center in Saudi Arabia or Dubai to serve MENA region There is a high demand for hosting services
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for the insight on this, we will definitelly look into the possibility to add another datacenter in your region.
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