Evaluating Web Hosting Reviews

Most web hosting reviews:

Are created as advertisements to sell web hosting for particular web hosts. They may be ranked according to how much money the advertiser earns by selling a hosting account.
Include only web hosts that will pay an advertiser a certain amount if the website visitor signs up for a hosting account.
Are biased toward profits for the advertiser and may not be accurately ranked based on any actual findings.

The majority of popular web hosting review sites available through an internet search are dominantly advertising portals with very little accurate information about the overall quality of the web hosts. Because these sites market themselves as web host review sites, it is difficult to find unbiased quality information about a web host to base purchasing decisions on.

This article is intended to help you weed through the web hosting reviews found on the internet to determine if they should be taken seriously or are merely a marketing ploy. It will also attempt to show you how to find and evaluate quality hosting reviews written by actual customers.

Types of web hosting reviews available

Web hosting reviews come in two types. The first is a general review that will show the features of the hosting accounts offered by each web host. These reviews may also include information about the datacenters of the web hosts and whether they are an actual web host or just a reseller for another hosting company. Note that the majority of hosting companies today are merely resellers. These types of reviews are useful to find general information about a web host usually in an easy-to-follow information-rich format. This will save you time over scouring a web hosts site to find this information.

The second type of hosting reviews are from actual users of the hosting company. In general reviews that do not supply a link to the hosting company, other than a direct homepage link that does not go through any redirects are from users that have nothing to gain or loose by reporting on the quality of hosting service. Generally speaking, it is easier to find unbiased negative hosting reviews than it is to find unbiased positive hosting reviews. Sometimes, however, a negative hosting review will be used to make another hosting company look better in hopes of driving traffic to that hosting company. Probably the best place to find unbiased hosting reviews are on web hosting forum posts (as opposed to web hosting review websites).

The detail in a web hosting review can hint at its quality

Getting to know the quality of your web host can only come through hosting an account with them. Over time a web hosting customer can learn about the quality and speed of customer service, the commonality of downtime, the features offered with the hosting account, the flexibility of the hosting account, any hidden fees, problems/issues with the interaction of the customers' website scripts and the web host's server software, security of the web host and the speed of the website.

Most hosting accounts have a one-year term. Over this one year at least a few minor problems/issues with your website or hosting account will arise. When an issue does arise, hopefully a quick email to customer service will help get the problem resolved. These problems allow you to get a feel for the responsiveness and quality of service provided by your webhost and allow you do better decide if you want to do business with the host again the following year. Becoming aware of these types of customer experiences provide the most valuable web hosting reviews.

Finding quality web hosting reviews

To find web hosting reviews of actual customer experiences, instead of just the usual trite reviews intended for advertising revenues, do an internet search for terms that a web hosting customer might use in a review of a web host. Example for a negative review might be "HOSTNAME SUCKS" or "STAY AWAY FROM HOSTNAME" or "AVOID HOSTNAME". These types of searches can pull up a surprising array of quality web hosting reviews.

Defining a quality web hosting review

A quality web hosting review should provide more than just a simple statement, e.g. "host with hostname, they are the best". The review should provide detailed information on why the particular web host is being recommended or not recommended. A good review may provide articles of correspondance between the customer and the web host on issues that arose with the hosting account. A good review will provide detailed and thorough information about a particular aspect of a webhost. A good web host review must be written by someone who has hosted with the company or someone (a webmaster) who has direct experience in dealing with the hosting company.

In Summary

Be wary of most web hosting reviews as they are merely marketing schemes to get you to buy a web hosting account so the advertiser will earn revenues. A quality web hosting review will provide specific details on issues with the webhost and will be written by someone who has direct experience in hosting with a particular company. Find quality web hosting reviews written by real customers by searching for text that a customer might type while writing a review of the company.

	Site Search