The most stupid question in web hosting industry probably is the one like “Which Are Top 10 Shared Hosting Providers?”. It is so stupid, that actually there is no answer. But thousands of money-making chasers give a birth “Top Hosting Directory” every single day. And that’s why there are a bunch of top or best web hosting site and directories out there. Some of them even receive high ranking in search engine result pages and bring thousands of dollars to their owners.
B10WH was there 4 years ago. But we decided to change the concept. At the same time we still pay attention to those who spend a loft of time to build the next top web hosting list. Today in “Have You Say” we will target your attention to a discussion in web hosting talk titled “Top 10 Shared Hosting Providers – What Are Your Thoughts”.
“Hello. I am new to WHT and a grad student at University of Texas. My purpose for joining is to gain research for a thesis I am doing titled “Internet – Where it all begins?” My focus is on the hosting provider side of the industry considering it is a $19 Billion dollar industry” says the WHT user “HostingResearcher” in a thread. He explains that the research that he found has lead him many different directions.
“There are many sites to tell you who the top 10 providers are within the industry, however they provide no background data on why”.
“It seems there are many website that tell you who the Top 10 providers are within the industry, however they provide no background data on why”, says the forum member. He also explains that there are some sights that provide user reviews, “however small sample data”. “This need for data brings me to you all” posts HostingResearcher and asks the questions “Who is the best shared hosting company?”, and “What makes them the best?”.
He also asks Web Hosting Talk members to help him to gather this data by responding via this quick survey. HostingResearcher calls WHT members to rate between 1 and 5 the web hosts’ – Service Offerings, Pricing, Customer Service, Market Perception, Experience, Quality.
What have you said?
“There are no “best” hosts. The top sites are mostly affiliate payout sites, pretty worthless what’s best for me may be terrible for you and vice versa – it all depends on what you find best and how the host works with you and/or for you”, wrote “njoker555”.
“There must be some consistency from one provider to the next. It seems that most of the shared hosting providers offer similar packages for space, control panel, bandwidth, support, and pricing. If you had to purchase a shared hosting package today, then who would you look at first?”, responds the “HostingResearcher”.
Another WHT member “SoftsysHosting-Rick” says that most of the top 10 that you’ll be looking at will be the hosts who pay good sum of $$ for getting up in the list. “However, as njoker mentioned, it all depends on your usage and it will be really difficult for you to come up with a list of say top 10 or top 20 hosts – the reason is simply that top 10 hosts differ from requirements to requirements”. ads the forum member.
“Hence, what I’d suggest you to do is to first gather different kind of requirements amongst customers and thereafter come up with top 10/20 hosts for each specific requirements. These requirements can be in terms of platform of hosting (Linux/Windows), type of hosting (shared/reseller/vps/dedicated), kind of hosting (website hosting/database hosting/email hosting/backup/all), etc. I believe, you will need to do quite a good amount of research and thereafter come up with your requirements after which you should be looking at customer inputs for their best host matching specific requirements. Fortunately, you are at the right place and you will get good amount of data/help from folks here”, explains “SoftsysHosting-Rick”.
“CodyRo” a forum member with 478 posts (at the time when they joined the conversation) said that it’s going to be very tough to make a conclusive list.
“For instance you have some smaller companies that people are very happy with, but their customer base is not nearly as far reaching as the larger hosts. As a result it’s going to be very difficult to get a consistent answer – especially on forums such as these where the small / medium sized hosts often have a decent following. Also things such as quality are merely perceptions and opinion. It’s going to be difficult to gather enough hard data based on that criteria”, explains CodyRo.
Ldcdc (Dan of WHReviews), on of the most fanatical WHT members with status “Community Liaison 2.0” who has 17,997 posts in Web Hosting Talk said it would be quite fantastic indeed and commented that anyone who wants to categorize the top share hosting providers needs may have to do their own research using the forum and some of the so called “top web hosting directories”. “How accurate it will all be, would end up being an endless debate. I know it for a fact that on one of them, some of the reviews were planted by the host itself, so the defense systems of these sites (those that actually have such) are not perfect. Then again, what is perfect in this world”, writes Ldcdc.
The next poster “NetDistrict” adds that he doesn’t think that people would need to look at how large a any web hosting company is. “This is less important to what the hosting company can offer the customer the quality, support options and prices of the hosting company”, posts NetDistrict.
The last in the line Host Color posts that they think that the price of web hosting services should be explained and the prospective customers must know what they pay for.
“There are companies that sell cheap, but don’t use redundant network or even a SLA. Others are very stable in terms of network and facilities but their support is not that good. From my point of view the quality of customer service is crucial in our industry. The communication with customers must be well organized and automated. However a high level of automatization is not just about buying software. It depends of how any web host manages different processes”, ads HostColor.
Thread is still open – http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=873969. You may join but, following the discussion and posting meaningful is a must
