How we review
What we compare
We compare hosting plans on four things we can verify: the introductory price, the renewal price, the contract term required to obtain the introductory price, and the resources included. We compute a four-year true cost from those numbers and rank primarily on it.
We deliberately do not publish speed benchmarks or uptime scores. Single-site benchmarks on shared hosting measure which neighbour was busy that afternoon, and every review site's uptime figures are within a rounding error of each other. Presenting that noise as a differentiator would be dressing up a guess.
How we make money
Affiliate commissions, and nothing else. If you click through to a host from this site and sign up, we may be paid — typically between $65 and $200 for a shared hosting signup, sometimes a percentage of the sale. You pay exactly the same price either way.
We publish the commission rates across the category because they are the single largest source of bias in hosting reviews, and you are better placed to judge our recommendations if you can see the incentive behind them.
Our conflicts, stated plainly
- We earn more when you buy a more expensive plan, and more still from managed WordPress hosting.
- Some hosts pay us more than others for the same sale.
- We have no relationship with any host beyond a standard affiliate agreement. No host reviews our content before publication, and none has paid for placement.
- Where we recommend against a purchase — as we do for managed hosting on new sites — we are recommending against our own commercial interest. That is the check you should hold us to.
How we handle prices
Prices change constantly and promotional rates change faster. Every price on this site carries the date it was verified. We re-check quarterly and after any major provider price change. If you find a stale figure, tell us and we will correct it.
We will not publish a price we have not seen on the provider's own site.
What would change our recommendations
A host that stopped using promotional pricing entirely would go straight to the top of our list, because flat pricing is worth more to a normal buyer than any feature in this category. Sustained, documented support failures would drop a host regardless of what it pays.