So you are looking to start a website and need a web hosting provider, so you think of checking out the hosting reviews available on the Internet to make the best informed decision. But wait a minute, there are more than 700,000 results for hosting reviews on Google! Now that is what I call information overload.

With so many hosting reviews out there, what is the verdict? Which really is the best web host? Let us first understand why there are so many websites that provide hosting reviews. Are there so many altruistic people who truly want to help others by sharing their findings or personal experience with the various web hosts? There are only a handful of these. Similarly for individuals who just want to rant their frustrations from bad experience with some of the bad hosting providers. The bulk of the review sites aim to generate traffic for AdSense revenue, some to collect advertising money to be listed in the league table, and others to promote certain Internet hosts to make money through affiliate marketing. Bearing this in mind, we need to be wary of the potential bias in some of the available hosting reviews.

Now let us review the criteria that should be assessed when comparing hosting providers:

1) Price — monthly, yearly, or bulk purchase rates, domain name inclusion, discounted price versus normal price

2) Features — bandwidth, diskspace, ease of use, reporting and stats, site creation tools, database support, email autoresponders, spam protection, POP3 addresses, FTP accounts, cPanel, E-commerce carts

3) Performance — speed, uptime or availability

4) Customer service — 24×7 phone support, email support, video tutorials, Frequently Asked Questions and answers (FAQ), forums, live chat support

5) Money-back guarantees

Location is not really key anymore in this day and age where Internet connectivity and speed have made geographical distances negligible in most cases, unless your site is very heavy and only serves local users. If you are serving users in China it would be better to go with a China-based host for faster speeds due to the heavy filtering imposed by the government.

When reading the hosting reviews, determine what is their basis for ranking the comparison criteria. Some are based on real-time voting by actual users or customers of the Internet hosts, while some reviews operate test accounts with the hosting providers. Others may only research on the Internet or base their reviews on findings from reports or magazines.

So what’s the verdict? Are web hosting reviews useful and which is the best host?

First of all, know what you want. Revisit the criteria listed above, and rank the top most important criteria, even down to each individual component if applicable. For example, your top three may be Price, Diskspace and Site Creation Tools in decreasing order of importance. Then check out three to five hosting reviews. The more detailed their criteria the better. One example is the web hosting review on TopTenReviews.com. Now combine the lists of top web hosts from the hosting reviews to get your own consolidated listing. The more times a web host appears in the top five usually the better. Lastly rank the hosts based on your top most important criteria so that you can easily and objectively choose the one that is most suited for you.

So the verdict is out. Web hosting reviews can be useful in helping you to decide which web host is best for you, if you know how to make good use of them.

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