Gov.uk Domain Hosting Packages

Whether your gov.uk web site is very small with a few information pages, or a more substantial site covering meeting minutes, announcements and official documents, it will need to be "hosted" on a web server. ActiveCouncil can provide you with web space on our own web server. Larger councils may wish to have their own dedicated or virtual private server. We can provide the most appropriate server in keeping with your council's particular requirements and budget. As a starting point, we provide a two basic hosting solutions:

Basic hosting Includes web space linked to a .gov.uk domain name. The council will be responsible for uploading and maintaining their own web site. CentOS VPS server with Apache, PHP and Perl installed.  Price: £175/year

Hosting + MySQL database Basic hosting plus your own MySQL database allowing you to use software such as WordPress. Note that we only create the database - you would be responsible for installing and maintaining any associated applications. Price £275/year

Note

• Prices exclude UK VAT at 20%
• For more advanced server requirements we can work with you to select a suitable bespoke server package.
• Any additional work that we undertake maintaining or administering your site is charged at a standard rate of £70/hour. All prices shown exclude VAT at 20% and are payable annually in advance.
• New gov.uk domain name registrations made as part of one of the above solutions incur a discounted one-off cost of £50+VAT towards the initial registration fees. Subsequent annual renewal fees are included in the base costs shown above.
• Purchase of a new gov.uk domain name without one of the above solutions incurs a one-off cost of £100+VAT and then £50/year+VAT per year thereafter.
• We do not provide email mailboxes - see Email solutions below

Moving an existing gov.uk web site

You may have a web site already hosted with a provider you no longer wish to use. Depending on the circumstances, we can usually transfer the complete site content to your new hosting space and ensure a smooth transition from the old to the new setup.

If you already have a domain name that you wish to keep - even if it is a gov.uk name - we can assist in the process of having the domain name transferred to ourselves, allowing us to take care of the necessary technical DNS configuration and to ensure correct billing arrangements are maintained.

Email solutions

Many councils now use external email services such as Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps For Business - these provides an excellent web-based email, calendar and collaboration suites that are robust and easy to manage.