I am a UK based designer, with a small client base and recently the online stores have been my best seller. All my clients are UK based also.

For the past 3 years I have been happily recommending UK shared hosting to most of my smaller clients and directing the larger clients to dedicated servers managed by the usual motley crew of providers.

I now feel the time has come to get a VPS and start selling my own hosting service as this will make management much easier and I won't have to deal with shoddy tech support.

I have spent the past couple of days searching the net and phoning companies inside the UK for information on the VPS options they offer. Why is the UK VPS scene so poor?

I then decided to call [a US host] who where very very helpful but did say any VPS hosting would be done in the USA.

Is there any real problems with hosting UK (.co.uk & .com) sites in the USA?

Will this effect search engine listings?

What is the minimum ping time you would recommend for ecommerce sites hosted stateside?

Anything else you can tell me about please do so.

Thanks

[edited by: phranque at 2:00 pm (utc) on Mar. 7, 2009]
[edit reason] hosting specifics [/edit]