Web Hosting Reviews

Table of Web Host Ratings

The web host providers which we will look at, in no particular order (except maybe alphabetical), will be as given in the following table of summary. You may click on the link in the last column to go directly to the company site to get more information or register an account, based on the ratings shown.

WEB HOST PROVIDER	BASED IN	RATING	LINK
	US	90%	www.bluehost.com
	US	78%	www.dreamhost.com
	UK	74%	www.fasthosts.co.uk
	US	72%	www.fatcow.com
	US	76%	www.godaddy.com
	US	80%	www.hostgator.com
	US	78%	www.mediatemple.net
	UK	86%	www.rshosting.co.uk
	UK	82%	www.123-reg.co.uk
www.1and1.com	US UK	50%	www.1and1.com www.1and1.co.uk

Criteria for Ratings

Most web host providers will advertise an uptime service of 99.9%, cPanel control and a list of other features. These features may change from time to time, and the lists of pros and cons outlined below are as given at time of writing. Each company is rated based on the following five criteria:

1. Features and Specifications
   This covers the facilities provided to the customer for the production of his website, as well as the programming languages and applications available at his disposal. Ideally, a cPanel form of control panel should be available for account management as basic, including PHP and MySQL databases. One-click installers for the quick and simple installation of common software and applications such as content management systems for blogs and forums are things to look out for by the novice user. For the more advanced user, Perl, Python and Ruby-on-Rails can be considered as requirements. Other factors include disk space and bandwidth, which come unlimited as standard these days.
2. Performance and Uptime
   For anyone running an eCommerce site or business online, uptime guarantee is highly crucial. While 99.9% uptime can be regarded as acceptable and standard, there are web host providers which provide 100% guarantee with enterprise-level performance. Web host providers with this added guarantee and better server performances are rated better than the competition.
3. Pricing and Value
   For this, a hosting plan with unlimited disk space and bandwidth at a monthly fee of approximately $5.00 was set as the benchmark for acceptable pricing. This criterion as well as the other features and specifications in the hosting plan determine if it is good value for money.
4. Customer Service and Support
   While 24/7 customer support via email, phone and chat is advertised as standard for most web host providers, there are the occasional web host providers which do not commit to this. Additional points are given for ticket-operated knowledgebase and online forum for hosting resources.
5. Customer Feedback and Opinion
   Nothing describes service quality accurately like sentiments of existing and previous customers, and the net was scoured for reviews left by these customers. Of course, I am also aware that unfavourable reviews could have been left behind by competitors and not only by disgruntled customers. Where seemingly so, these unfair reviews were discounted.

Each web host provider is given an overall rating based on an average of the 5 criteria above, with the following range and description:

• 85% – 100%: Excellent
• 75% – 84%: Good
• 65% – 74%: Average
• 55% – 64%: Satisfactory
• 0% – 54%: Poor

Details are given in the next section.