Choosing a Web Host

I’m con­sult­ing with three groups that are con­sid­er­ing a change in their web hosts. Since my own host has made me a lit­tle grumpy lately I’ve decided to move some of my domains to a new host. I have some expe­ri­ence at this (I’ve been through at least five hosts by now), but it’s been a few years since I last switched and I’d like to prac­tice on myself—practice not just at mov­ing hosts, but at pick­ing them.

So here’s the thing: how do you pick? Counts vary, but even the most con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mates sug­gest there are over 10,000 groups offer­ing web host­ing services.

And there are dozens of sites offer­ing reviews of web hosts.

Which review site do you trust?

The Wis­dom Crank­i­ness of Crowds

Answer: none of them.

In gen­eral you can’t tell who’s behind the reviews. Some review sites are edi­to­r­ial in style, with sites’ own­ers judg­ing web hosts, and while I have no spe­cific rea­son to doubt the edi­tors’ good inten­tions, I have no spe­cific rea­son to assume their good inten­tions either. And many edi­to­r­ial sites com­pare the qual­ity of the plans’ offer­ings rather than the qual­ity of their ser­vice, which—while not a bad thing to know—doesn’t tell me whether I’ll love or hate my new host a month from now.

See­ing opin­ions from actual users would be awfully use­ful, and many review sites do offer rat­ings from “actual” users. By those air-quotes I mean that you don’t know whether the peo­ple doing the rat­ings are actual users, or web hosts try­ing to ratchet up their own num­bers, or web hosts try­ing to ratchet down their com­peti­tors’ numbers.

But we can rest our hope in the wis­dom of crowds, or at least in the wis­dom of crowds of review sites.

By aggre­gat­ing rat­ings from mul­ti­ple review sites we can hope to mit­i­gate the effect of peo­ple cyn­i­cally manip­u­lat­ing the sys­tem. We still have prob­lems: for exam­ple, some­one could game all of the review sites, some actual users have unre­al­is­tic expec­ta­tions of their web hosts, and the reviews aren’t all recent.

But the results should be bet­ter than, as they say, squat.

An Analy­sis as of 2009-07-03

I recently ana­lyzed 24 web hosts across five user-review based sites:

I also included one editorial-style site that seemed to me at least some­what care­ful in its assessments:

And for good mea­sure I threw in the Bet­ter Busi­ness Bureau which, though it doesn’t know web host­ing from a hole in the fire­wall, might at least flag some com­pa­nies that are get­ting broadly slammed for bad busi­ness practices:

Probably-Necessary Caveats and Disclaimers

I surely haven’t got­ten any kick­backs or other good­ies from any of these web hosts or review sites.

Also, as I already men­tioned, this tech­nique isn’t per­fect so the results deserve to be taken with a grain of salt. (Though hope­fully a smaller grain of salt than if you vis­ited any indi­vid­ual host­ing review site.)

And finally, I haven’t read all the com­ments or per­son­ally inves­ti­gated all these hosts, so my sub­jec­tive eval­u­a­tion isn’t really involved in this. It’s all about the numbers.

So you’re wel­come to use this as guide­line if you’d like, and while there are no guar­an­tees here (or else­where in life) I hope you find it valuable.

Higher-Rated Hosts

These rat­ings rep­re­sent a snap­shot of review­ers’ over­all hap­pi­ness with their web hosts. The num­bers don’t take into account cost, fea­tures, etc., all of which deserve investigation.

If you’re a non­profit look­ing for a web host, ide­al­ware has a nice arti­cle on the topic.

WHG WHJ WHR HS WHS BBB UH
Host­Ga­tor 7.6
(3)		 9.8
(50)		 9.4
(47)		 7.9
(29)		 10.0
(28)		 B– n/a
icd­soft n/a 9.8
(88)		 8.5
(7)		 10.0
(3)		 10.0
(14)		 n/a n/a
InMo­tion 8.9
(110)		 9.1
(28)		 10.0
(6)		 9.75
(2)		 10.0
(13)		 A– 87%
(B+)
Polur­NET n/a 9.9
(126)		 10.0
(2)		 n/a 8.0
(5)		 n/a n/a

Other Hosts

WHG WHJ WHR HS WHS BBB UH
1and1 (aka 1&1) 4.8
(155)		 4.0
(324)		 2.8
(45)		 n/a n/a n/a n/a
Blue­Host 6.5
(256)		 8.2
(16)		 6.6
(21)		 6.15
(6)		 8.0
(13)		 n/a 95%
(A)
DreamHost 5.6
(3)		 7.5
(105)		 7.6
(42)		 8.1
(27)		 8.0
(29)		 n/a 87%
(B)
Glo­bat 5.6
(122)		 4.0
(170)		 3.3
(12)		 3.8
(21)		 5.0
(15)		 C n/a
GoDaddy 5.2
(64)		 4.8
(95)		 7.3
(52)		 n/a 5.0
(24)		 A+ n/a
Host­Mon­ster 6.0
(146)		 9.8
(10)		 6.1
(18)		 9.0
(1)		 8.0
(16)		 n/a 91%
(A-)
JustHost 8.0
(297)		 n/a 0.8
(29)		 n/a 8.0
(71)		 B– 79%
(B-)
LunarPages 5.5
(136)		 9.8
(79)		 6.8
(25)		 4.8
(14)		 10.0
(13)		 A– 85%
(B)
Web Host­ing Pad 7.8
(96)		 n/a 2.5
(12)		 n/a 8.0
(49)		 n/a 90%
(A)
Yahoo 5.4
(134)		 4.4
(10)		 n/a n/a 5.0
(28)		 A 70%
©

Hosts Omit­ted for Lim­ited Data

I ana­lyzed the fol­low­ing hosts but omit­ted them from the final list­ing because each had fewer than 100 total rat­ings across all review sites.

  • ANHost­ing
  • Aplus.net
  • BlurStorm
  • Dynamic Host­ing
  • Fat Cow
  • Media Tem­ple
  • Mosso
  • Net­work Solutions
  • Pronet Host­ing
  • WebzPro

There are 2 responses to this post.

By Choosing a Web Host on July 9, 2009 at 9:07 pm

[…] Orig­i­nal post:  Choos­ing a Web Host […]

By Migrating Your Domain to a New Web Host » Blazing Moon on September 11, 2009 at 6:28 pm

[…] recently offered sta­tis­tics to help you choose a web host. You can use my num­bers or research on your own, but look before you sign up for an […]

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