I searched but i didn't find anything about the choise between a server in UK or in US.

For a UK company :

If you get a US server it's better for the americans people (that is a bigger market than the UK one) because it's faster for them.
But with a US server you're under US laws and there's the COPPA law (register child under 13).

Do you get my problem ?

Do you take a US server and just forbid child under 13 years old ?
or you take a server in UK ?

Thanks,
Nico

Nico - I had the exact same problem last month. In the end I went with a US server mainly because of price and bandwidth issues.
I have a forum on one of my sites and have enforced the COPPA restriction when someone tries to visit.

I chose to go with a US server because of the cost factor, i can get double what i can here for the money.

I'd go with the US, mainly just because of cost.
But also though it is growing, users under the age of 13 are not that common yet.
It all depends on what sort of people u want to visit or what the sites about I guess though.

Originally Posted by awhost.0lx.net

It all depends on what sort of people u want to visit or what the sites about I guess though.

Yes - I couldn't agree with this statement more! It fully depends on what your website is about and the audience you're trying to attract.

A large number of UK companies/individuals are creating sites intended for a local audience (i.e. within the UK) and therefore UK based hosting is a logical choice. Costs are generally higher in the UK, but this varies with the exchange rate...

An important factor that's often overlooked is the ease at which you can get in touch with your provider. You would hope that support is 24/7, so that part might not be too much of an issue, but what about sales and billing issues? These can sometimes be time-critical too and therefore shouldn't be completely overlooked.

With regard to what you're actually hosting, again the latency of US (even east-coast) compared to UK for your UK visitors will have different levels of impact - if you're hosting a typical HTML website it will probably not be too noticable, but if it's something higher bandwidth (audio/video streaming for example) or otherwise benefitting from quicker responsiveness you should consider hosting as locally to your customers/audience as possible.

Also don't forget that UK hosting will (should) give better connectivity with mainland Europe, and therefore you should really think of it as two markets: EMEA, and the Americas - depends what you're targetting.

Legal issues regarding hosting location are very complicated and I would advise taking professional legal advice to understand the full range of issues applicable to your situation. One example though would be EU Data Protection law; my understanding is that hosting personal data in the US can often (not always) be against (the UK implementation of) EU data protection law. So the COPPA issue is just one that may or may not influence your decision.

There is a huge price difference between the two countries, but both packages are still quite large. Its depends on your requirements, as long as you can afford the uk server, get the hosting in the UK if your requirements will fit within the plan.
UK Hosting and pricing are more expensive because data centers get the rip in bandwidth and power

Originally Posted by pow-wow

UK Hosting and pricing are more expensive because data centers get the rip in bandwidth and power

Have you looked at the prices of colo space in Australia / Ireland?

Thanks for all your reply,
Then it's a big mess for me ^^ i've got a young traget with 50/50 UK and US.
i've already had some issues with the COPPA law it's why i'm carefull

Are you looking at some kind of interactive website (e.g. a forum) or would it be suitable to have UK and a US sections, each hosted in their respective locations?

In that case you could scale down your infrastructure needs as you obviously wouldn't need 2 dedicated servers - could use something like 2 VPS's?

Depending on budget, you could use GeoIP DNS to direct people to their most local server - a bit like Google do for example. That in itself is relatively easy and inexpensive to handle, but if you need to do real-time sync of databases etc. it gets expensive and potentially complicated.

1 US server to serve Amercia, 1 UK server to serve Euroupe.. job done

But yes the cost of bandwidth in america is so much cheaper than the UK .. just like oil, food, houses, land... anyway thats another day's rant =]

Hey does anyone have more information on the COPPA stuff, I have seen it a bit on forums but never understood it. Does it get policed?

Cheers all,

Originally Posted by Sir P

Hey does anyone have more information on the COPPA stuff, I have seen it a bit on forums but never understood it. Does it get policed?

http://www.coppa.org/

cheers =]

That's interesting information about COPPA
http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.shtm

I'm surprised that most of you are not aware about that.

Most of internet users are from US. I think that you want to be in the leed (I mean page download speed) you better have main web site in the USA and mirrow in the UK. And target users by their IP location. But it would be quite expensive

Yes US users are very important.
I checked some website with a register for child under 13, but they just send an email to the parents who they have to accept or not, but without digital sign on the parents' mail that's not comply with COPPA.

I cant see how its policed though, and there is nothing about how they intend its enforcement within the coppa website

It's explain on this one : http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.shtm

2. How do I get parental consent?

You can use any number of methods to obtain verifiable parental consent, as long as the method you choose is reasonably calculated to ensure that the person providing consent is, in fact, the child’s parent. The Rule sets forth several options:

If you are going to disclose children’s personal information to third parties, or make it publicly available through operation of an online service such as a social networking site, a blog hosting service, personal home pages, chat rooms, message boards, pen pal services, or email accounts, then you must use one of the more reliable methods to obtain verifiable parental consent enumerated in the Rule:

• Provide a form for the parent to print, fill out, sign, and mail or fax back to you (the “print-and-send” method);
• Require the parent to use a credit card in connection with a transaction (which could consist of a membership or subscription fee, a purchase, or a charge to cover the cost of processing the credit card). For more on credit card transactions, see Question 33, below;
• Maintain a toll-free telephone number staffed by trained personnel for parents to call in their consent; or
• Obtain consent through an email from the parent, if that email contains a digital signature, or other digital certificate that uses public key technology obtained through one of the above methods.

If you are going to use children’s personal information only for internal purposes, that is, you will not be disclosing the information to third parties or making it publicly available, then you can use any of the above methods, or you can use the “email plus” mechanism. The “email plus” mechanism allows you to request (in the direct notice to the parent) that the parent provide consent in an email message. However, this mechanism requires that you take an additional step after receiving the parent’s email consent to confirm that it was, in fact, the parent who provided consent (the “plus” factor). These additional steps include:

• Requesting in your initial email seeking consent that the parent include a phone or fax number or mailing address in the reply email, so that you can follow up to confirm consent via telephone, fax, or postal mail; or
• After a reasonable time delay, sending another email to the parent to confirm consent. In this confirmatory email, you should include all the original information contained in the direct notice, inform the parent that he or she can revoke the consent, and inform the parent how to revoke the consent.

As I know there are companies that have servers both in the UK and USA. MarbleHost.com is one of them. Use services from them and you'll have no isses at all.

Originally Posted by juio

As I know there are companies that have servers both in the UK and USA. MarbleHost.com is one of them. Use services from them and you'll have no isses at all.

I agree that there are companies providing services in UK and USA - but I'm not quite sure how you draw the conclusion that by using one of these companies "you'll have no issues at all"... surely that depends on the company you choose in exactly the same way as if you were selecting a company only offering servers in the UK, or a different company only offering servers in the USA?

To pick up on another point raised, yes it's true that the US is a very large Internet market, but at the same time you could say the same about China & India. These markets (esp. China) are growing at a massive rate and will have a larger Internet public than the US within a few years.

However, it totally depends on the purpose of your site. If your site is telling you about petrol ("gas") stations in the UK then it probably isn't really of interest to USA, China, India, Australia, Japan etc. so you should concentrate on decent connectivity to your UK audience (which may or may not mean a server in the UK; you can still get reasonable connectivity from elsewhere to the UK, but it depends on how latency sensitive your site/visitors will be).

Well... It's simple. If you live in the UK your better off getting a server in the UK. But, if you live in the US I would say get a server in the US.