Web Hosting Reviews – Are They Scamming You?

Web hosting review sites are one way of choosing a host, to see what other people think before housing your entire business website with a bad hosting provider. Unfortunately, many of these sites are fronts for the providers themselves, are loaded with shill reviews, or list only the hosts that pay the review site owner the highest commissions. You may want to take this into account before trusting them.

First, many “web hosting review” sites offer only what seem to be real reviews, whereas behind the scenes one of the web hosting companies themselves is the owner of the actual review site! Coincidentally, the host owning the site seems to come up at the top of all lists and is the best rated. In other words, the review site is just a promotional front.

A few review sites are set up like Amazon.com, allowing five-star reviews from actual users. This can certainly be useful, but it is also too open to abuse from less scrupulous web hosting companies. Some of them are in the habit of flooding these sites with reviews of themselves, creating so many fake five-star reviews that they end up as the “best reviewed site,” even though they are no such thing.

Lastly, many hosts offer commission based upon getting others to sign up with them, and many of the “web hosting review” sites are set up so the highest paying commission hosts are also, strangely, the best reviewed. Hosts that pay little or no commission may not be on the site at all. This is hardly what you would call an honest site.

As you can see, many “web hosting review” sites are nothing of the sort and should be looked upon with suspicion. If you place your business website with a poor quality host, you may have more headaches than you could ever imagine. Instead, it is best to seek out short comments by real people on sites such as forums and blogs, as these are generally “by the way” remarks and not whole reviews.