I can't speak to how things were in 2023 but today you do not need to visit Estonia.
Registering a company in the U.K. is very easy but the tax treatment is less favourable compared to Estonia. The U.K. leaving the European Union is also disadvantageous (although the full consequence of that is yet to be seen). All company filings in the U.K. are public, much more information about your company is public compared to Estonia.
I've had companies in a few different jurisdictions, including a Delaware C Corp[1] and currently an OÜ through Estonia's e-residency program.
Yes, it is fantastic and delivers on all of the promises. The only potential headache is that you must collect your e-residency card from an embassy which, depending on your location, might require travel to a nearby country.
I used Xolo but there are lots of agents in the directory. I like and recommend Xolo. No idea what the supposed issue with banking is, all of the agents have banking relationships and you can also use Revolut and Wise. My bank account was opened same day as the company.
Your details are published on the public register. The moment your registration is published you'll get lots of emails offering services, like banking (some people pretend to be Revolut but are actually just sending you affiliate links). Don't publish an email address you care about.
[1] The problem with forming a U.S. company is that all of the formation agents are layers on top of a convoluted nightmare. The formation agent can do their best to abstract away the complexity but the moment you have to peak behind the curtain you'll find yourself face to face with something very scary. The Estonian e-residency program is integrated all the way through.
https://e.ml A free inbrowser inbox for inspecting .eml (email) files. There are many one-off .eml viewers around but I found myself inspecting the same files many times which evolved into this concept of an inbrowser inbox. Plus, world's shortest domain (3 characters) and the domain is an exact match for the file extension, a fun novelty. Very easy to remember!
https://milliondollarchat.com a reimagining of the million dollar homepage for the AI age. Not useful, but fun. A free to use chatbot that anyone can influence by adding to the context. The chatbot's "thoughts" are streamed to all visitors.
That's a funny nightmare. I created something similar, but less parody and more practical. Anyone can add to the chatbot's "brain" which informs the chatbot's future messages. I implemented it following the Million Dollar Homepage's model, i.e: a limited amount of context that is displayed alongside the chat.
Reach out to ben[1] from IPinfo, he took over ip4.me, ip6.me and a number of other websites following the passing of Kevin Loch earlier this year[2]. I am sure he would be happy to keep test-ipv6.com running without compromising it :) Very reputable, a great track record!
Registering a company in the U.K. is very easy but the tax treatment is less favourable compared to Estonia. The U.K. leaving the European Union is also disadvantageous (although the full consequence of that is yet to be seen). All company filings in the U.K. are public, much more information about your company is public compared to Estonia.