Web Hosting Reviews – Don’t Get Scammed!
April 25, 2009 by Martin Kulp
Filed under Web Hosting
When browsing the web for reviews of hosting providers, you’ll find many sites offering starred reviews, similar to what you see on Amazon.com, often arrange by “best” on top. There are a few problems with these review sites, however, and you may want to consider these before entrusting your business website with what may be a poor quality host.
Several hosts are in the slimy business of creating “web hosting review” sites that look real, and may even have some real reviews and possibly even allow users to submit reviews, but of course skew all the results so they come up at the top and their direct competitors are near the bottom.
Some web hosting review sites are actually legitimate sites that allow users to submit their own reviews, but you can see how this will be abused. Many of these are overrun by phony reviews from the actual hosting companies themselves, skewing the results and the appearance of their own standing among users. It’s not uncommon for some of the lesser-known, and possibly lesser-quality, hosts to create multiple five star reviews to get them to the top of the list.
Also, several sites that offer “web hosting reviews” are dishonestly set up so the host that pays the highest commission to the site owner is also rated the highest, and is most prominent in all lists as “best host.” Genuine review sites should also include hosts that do not pay commission, or pay little.
In conclusion, beware of so-called “web hosting review” sites that may be contaminated with biased reviews. The best method to research a host before entrusting your business website to it is to look for short comments on blogs instead of full reviews, as these are less apt to be abused by unscrupulous web hosts.
