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25 Comments
- AaronCo, on 03/26/2009, -0/+9You've GOT to be kidding me...
Rating hosting service based on "the numbers" is the single dumbest move anyone could ever do. What is this, amateur hour?
It encourages vast overselling of resources and insanely tight quotas on stuff like CPU and database usage. Ever seen an SQL time limit quota of 3 seconds on a shared server? Imagine trying to run even phpBB or wordpress on that thing and getting half your queries terminated early. Painful. Just look at hostingzoom's latest "resource policy" for an example of "oversold."
What we really need to know is how long the business has been in business for, whether it's stable, what the terms of service are, what usage restrictions exist, how customer service reacts to a problem and what outages are like. I'd gladly pay an extra $10 per month if it means I never have to deal with an outage or dumb 1st-level service reps. - cl2yp71c, on 03/26/2009, -0/+8Why not just Digg the actual site, rather than a ***** blog post.
- guyro, on 03/26/2009, -0/+4All of our names are on the website, on our about page. I hear what you're saying though and we'll consider expanding a little more about ourselves and our backgrounds. Thanks for the constructive feedback!
- zyko, on 03/26/2009, -0/+2So apparently they get get referral commissions, but they claim to be honest. Same with the other affiliate review sites pushing the companies with the best commissions. I don't see a difference.
Reviews can be gamed and abused, and they are. Reviews only have value when the reviewer is known and trusted or when there is so many reviews that gaming or abuse becomes watered down.
When it comes to shared hosting it's all relative. It's a server by server issue. Server reliablity is dependant on the other users/sites on the server. So a complaint about a crappy server and downtime can only be applicable for that server, not neccisarily the host. Each server the host uses would need independant reviews and monitoring.
The main issues to look at for a host is techical skill and customer service. But more importantely an techincal department that helps with customer service. Having some secratary answer the phone 24/7 that has no knowledge of hosting issues has little value. - pradador, on 03/26/2009, -0/+2I used to switch hosting providers every 6-12 months. Partly cause I like to tinker with new stuff, partly cause the service wasn't really that great to begin with. I finally went with a colocated solution about 2 years ago and haven't looked back since. $24 a month to host a Mac Mini seems reasonable to me, and the amount of stuff you can do is just awesome. Why pay $6 for hosting and email, $8 for MobileMe, $7 for an SVN repo, etc. etc when with a little work you can manage it all yourself.
The latest trick I've been doing is using the Mini as a proxy for when I'm out of town. Hulu thinks I'm in NC when I'm really in Europe enjoying their videos. - eviljim, on 03/26/2009, -0/+1The problem if you rate things "by the numbers" is the crappy sites that give huge referral fees will float to the top. They'll happily throw in 2 TB disk space and 5 TB transfer a day for $7.95 a month... that's going to look good "by the numbers", generate a nice commission of $100-$200, but send a customer to a terrible provider that has no intention on actually delivering on its promise, and that has no customer support.
- chuckstudios, on 03/26/2009, -0/+1They may not be biased, but as the author states, it doesn't take quality into account. "Infinite" bandwidth doesn't mean ***** if you get terminated after going over 50GB, and all the storage space in the world won't help you against a week-long outage.
On the other hand, the service could prove useful in order to find the hosts who actually provide what you need. From there, you can probably search around for legitimate problems that don't end with "... so I switched to _______, you can use my referral code _______ to get it for $____ a month!" - zyko, on 03/26/2009, -0/+2Hostmonk which is the topic of the article is using hidden whois and it's owners are anonymous. I personally have a problem with trusting anonymous websites that claim to be ethical and unbiased. Private whois has a place for some uses, but if a website creator can't publicity stand by his service/website then I find that suspicious.
- guyro, on 03/26/2009, -1/+4zyko - we are not anonymous, our names are there - mine included. My name is Guy Rosen, you can Twitter me on @guyro or Google for my LinkedIn, Facebook or personal blog - where I've been making friends and sharing my life and development for a long time. The fact that I don't want to put my personal home address on the WHOIS record (since we're a project run by a few guys, not a big company with offices) is irrelevant. Professionally, I'm an open book.
- yocouchdigga, on 03/26/2009, -0/+2I'm disappointed in you, syntax. This is definitely not up to par.
- chuckstudios, on 03/26/2009, -0/+1C'mon syntaxgs. You're slipping, that wasn't nearly as trollalicious as it could have been.
- fuzzynyanko, on 03/26/2009, -0/+1From what I heard, they usually nail you on something like CPU usage instead of bandwidth
- commentbot, on 03/27/2009, -0/+1No Dreamhost? LOL...
- uncoolcentral, on 03/26/2009, -0/+1No digg. A review site based on useless metrics doesn't help anybody. I pick a host based on things like:
- uptime
- client to server ratio
- security practices
- SEO friendliness
- etc.
Calico Hosting FTW! - emdub, on 03/26/2009, -1/+2Uhm having done affiliate management for a big web host I can say each and every ranking site out there is completely full of *****. It's not a secret, you offer more than the other host per signup and you get better placement, provided your conversion rate is good. They'll give you a shot at #4 for a month, if you perform they'll bump you up to maybe #3 or #2. Most of the time the operators of host ranking sites either work for hosts themselves or are close with the owners of hosts and those are the ones to get top billing. Getting #1 on a host ranking site is next to impossible based on CPA and conversions alone.
I personally negotiated plenty of deals where we're paying either per signup or a flat rate for the placement per month. Another fun trick is letting them keep the money for X number of cancelled accounts, just to stay in their good graces. They get rich, you get signups and who cares what the customers get thanks to a well-written Terms of Service and billing practices that let you keep gobs of cash from unsuspecting suckers.
The whole thing is scammy and dirty and just one of those things that makes the scummy world of web hosting go around. Next expose will be about how hosts are overselling, yeah? - guyro, on 03/26/2009, -0/+1You're exactly right. We're hoping to add some metrics of a provider's reliability / credibility / customer experience so that these can be taken into account.
- keyo, on 03/26/2009, -0/+1Shared hosting sucks, I like to have full control on a budget and vps suits well. Also this way I won't have to worry about other people on the server doing stupid stuff, or accessing any of my files I forgot to set permissions on.
Diggers: who are you using as your vps provider? - enkideridu, on 05/15/2009, -0/+1It doesn't have Bluehost? I thought that was one of the biggest hosting providers
- chuckstudios, on 03/26/2009, -1/+1In case anyone wants to read Hosting Zoom's policy...
8. Resource Usage.
You agree to not use excessive amounts of resources. Any violations may result in us taking corrective action in order maintain server stability by killing any processes, disabling and/or suspending your account.
8.1 Shared hosting accounts may not use more than 3% CPU or 3% memory over a 24 hour period, run more than 15 simultaneous processes or allow any process to run for longer than 30 CPU seconds. Databases are limited to 24 max user connections.
Semi dedicated hosting accounts may not use more than 6% CPU daily, run more than 30 simultaneous processes or allow any process to run for longer than 60 CPU seconds. Databases are limited to 30 max user connections.
Your account may be subject to an automatic suspension if you exceed either the Memory or CPU limits more than 100 times in a single day. If our system administrators determine that a customer's account is utilizing an unacceptable amount of system resources, we may temporarily deactivate the account in question to preserve server integrity for other users. We may contact the client to offer alternative solutions for their accounts and make our best attempt to keep their account active without degradation to other clients services. The Company is the sole arbiter as to what constitutes a violation of this provision. Clients will not use more than 55,000 inodes on any single account. You may not use your shared or semi-dedicated accounts for file storage of other accounts, backups, storing backups of dvd's, mp3's, or any files larger than 150mb. Large and plentiful files used in this manner on an active system can cause file system corruption and lead to not just your own data loss but that of others.
Your account is provisioned with a monthly bandwidth allowance that varies depending on the hosting plan you order. If your account exceeds the allocated amount we reserve the right to suspend the account until the start of the next month, until you upgrade to a higher plan, or until you purchase more bandwidth. If you terminate the account you are still responsible and liable for any current usage and associated fees for the overages. Bandwidth limits on shared and semi-dedicated plans are divided into daily equal limits that reset each night. Ie, 300gb month / 30 days = 10gb day. - myDiggDog, on 03/26/2009, -1/+1They need to expand their coverage of Web hosting providers. The one that I’m currently using, Sightground.com, doesn’t appear to be listed. Perhaps they will add more in the future.
- zyko, on 03/26/2009, -2/+2It was submitted by one owner of hostmonk, so I'm guessing he was trying to publicize a third party positive review rather than his website directly.
- zyko, on 03/26/2009, -1/+1Yes, I found your name, but why not put it on the website? Why not disclose your partners and make it all public? It's good you are backing your venture personally and openly. It gives it more credibility.
- syntaxgs, on 03/26/2009, -2/+3LOL The Face MAn on the picture is funny xD
- hagiaso, on 03/26/2009, -0/+1So what's your best (worst?) hosting experience?
Personally, I've been with several companies over the years and no one has ever compared to my current host, GigeNET. It's amazingly fast and 100% uptime and on the few times that I've required their support it has never been less than top notch.
Worst: Stay away from 1&1... - InetSquirrel2, on 03/26/2009, -3/+1The link was changed to: http://www.roytanck.com/2009/03/26/hostmonk-compar ...
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