Hey, im from the UK and starting an ecommerce site. Im just asking if, hosting from the US will make my site much slower for UK viewers? As it is quite a bit cheaper when bought from US, but i don't want it to be too slow? So basically, will hosting from the US slow down the site noticeable for the UK viewers of the site? Thanks.
I don't think it would make much difference, it mostly depends on the speed of the data center and the current server load. You can still get cheap, high quality hosting in the UK - if your ecommerce site is quite 'light' and your not planning on getting 1000s of visitors then check out relichost.net as it's only £6 a year. (I am not affiliated with them)
You can still get quality hosting from a US based company that will see good speeds within the UK. I've worked for multiple web hosting companies (all US based) and there were always a very large number of UK customers signing up and reporting good performance. Good luck in your search!
I am from the Czech Republic and I have most of the websites in our US data center and one website which is targeted for Czech visitors in our UK data center. All websites are loaded quite quickly but the one hosted in the UK data center loads a little faster. There is also difference when uploading the files using FTP.
In term of speed,it will definitely slower than the US server. But don't worry about that,coz the speed is negligible due to the speed different is too hard to be feel by your website user.
For 6 a year i guess i cannot ask much...but since relichost moved my stuff to a new server it never worked like before :\