web hosting,web host review,top web hosts

y name is Dan Scott. I’ve worked in the computing industry for over twenty-five years. Recently, I decided to create my own web site for my family. Although I’ve worked with the technology for years, up until now it had always been on either a customer’s servers or on corporate servers. This was my first time to look for a public hosting site for myself. I thought it would be easy; with my experience I thought I could quickly find the best hosting site for my needs…I was wrong.

I spent days reading reviews, studying hosting web sites, searching through forums trying to find the best web host. Just any host wouldn’t do, I wanted the best. And, the more I read the more I learned just how much a poor choice in a web host could affect me and just how many poor ones there were. Horror stories of people who had worked for months getting a web site put together only to have their hosting company disappear, taking all their work with them. Sites that were down more than they were up and technical support that appeared to be run by Don Rickles. Even stories of domain names being stolen and the user blackmailed to get it back…by the hosting company!

In the end, I found a company I have been happy with. But, I felt bad for all those that would come after, all going through the same hassle that I had or worse, just picking one at random and potentially adding their story to the list of web hosting horror stories.

So, I’ve created a list of the top sites I have found, along with how they all scored in the areas I think are critical for a web host. I’ll update the info once a month (this is now current for the month of May). I’m really sorry folks (and thanks for asking), but I’ve been flitting from one side of the country to the other for the last several weeks now and haven’t been able to devote the hours it takes to gleaning the information I need to update my table. I should catch a break here shortly and will update as soon as I am able.

Curious where these numbers came from and what they mean? Look below to see how I came up with them.

May Results (June data coming soon!)

Host Name	Price	Reliability	Customer Service	Technical Support	Ease of Use	Features	Storage Space	Bandwidth	Final Score
	$6.95	9.85	9.33	9.52	9	9.52	1500 GB	15000 GB	98.50%
	$6.95	9.73	9.6	8.6	9	10	1500 GB	15000 GB	97.42%
	$6.95	9.53	9.47	9.23	9	9.4	1500 GB	15000 GB	97.12%
	$6.95	9.25	9.25	*	8	10	1500 GB	15000 GB	96.13%
	$11.95	9.9	8.92	9.17	8.63	9	unlimited	unlimited	95.50%
webhostingpad.com	$6.95	8.83	8.33	*	8.25	9.5	1700 GB	17000 GB	91.42%
ipower.com	$6.95	9.38	8.88	9	6	10	1500 GB	15000 GB	91.11%
	$7.95	8.65	8.71	8.05	8.6	9.42	unlimited	unlimited	89.69%
dot5hosting.com	$5.95	9.07	8.23	9.8	7.2	8.18	1500 GB	15000 GB	89.69%
hostgator.com	$7.95	8.86	8.52	8.34	*	8.33	600 GB	6000 GB	89.34%
	$5.95	9.36	8.03	8.07	7.2	9.3	1500 GB	15000 GB	87.74%
godaddy.com	$6.64	8.85	7.92	8.59	8	8.5	150 GB	1500 GB	87.29%
dreamhost.com	$5.95	7.19	9.06	8.31	*	8.5	500 GB	5000 GB	85.69%
hostpapa.com	$7.95	9.1	8.2	9	6	7.75	1500 GB	15000 GB	85.35%
ipowerweb.com	$6.95	8	8	9	7.5	8.45	1500 GB	15000 GB	85.31%
powweb.com	$5.77	8.33	8.33	10	5	8	1500 GB	15000 GB	84.74%
lunarpages.com	$7.95	8.85	8.08	7.75	7	8.53	5 GB	400 GB	84.24%
anhosting.com	$6.95	8.33	8.67	8	5.33	8.67	500 GB	5000 GB	82.44%
vistapages.com	$7.95	8.75	8.75	8	6	6	1800 GB	18000 GB	80.67%
1and1.com	$4.99	7.47	6.03	4.68	8	8.25	120 GB	1200 GB	69.82%

(*) – No data available.

So, where did this data come from? I’m glad you asked. This is actually the result of many days of work scouring the web for reviews on the various web hosts. I limited my research to only include those reviews that have quantitative data; just saying, “somewebhost.com (hopefully, that’s not a real web site) has really good customer service” was not enough. I needed something I could use to compare to other sites, like response times or time to resolution. Also, a web host had to have at least two independent reviews to be included in the final results. I converted everything I found to a one-to-ten scale and put it all in a table. All of that information was then averaged and sorted. When averaging I weighted Reliability highest, then Customer Service and Technical Support higher than Ease of Use and Features.

 

Then I went to each of the hosting web sites and captured their current information on pricing, storage space, and bandwidth for a typical one year hosting package. Why include so many if I only need one host site? Well, for one thing, I have chosen the ‘top’ provider based on my own criteria of reliability and customer service, but somebody else might use different criteria to make their selection. And, in spite of all the work I already went through to gather and summarize this data I realize people will still want to compare it to other reviews and I wanted them to be able to get all the data I could provide.

 

If you find this information useful, please use the link from my web page to your chosen host. It won’t cost you anything or commit you to anything if you should change your mind, but the revenue I receive helps to pay for this web site and my time in keeping it up.

 

For the sake of full disclosure, I am currently using HostMonster and have been very satisfied with them.