Most web hosting customers encounter problems and demand better services. This page gives you new insights into the mentality of web hosts.
Did you know that many online opinions are fake? After long research I have come to the conclusion that approximately 50% is not real. This percentage is almost identical to what BBC News published several years ago. It are particularly the large hosting providers who are the culprits. It's mostly done in secrecy and, to prevent possible damage to their reputation, most of these web hosts outsource this work to specialized agencies that offer their services offline by recruiting ordinary people in cafe's and coffee shops who like to earn something extra. By doing things this way these agencies can stay out of the hands of Authorities and keep their customers, the hosting services, happy. My estimation is that these agencies are responsible for about 65 percent of fake online reviews.
And the rest?
I discovered that the rest of fabricated opinions, which is about 35 percent, is written and published by small web hosts, resellers and affiliates. Small hosting companies often don't have the budget to outsource their shady task. The same is valid for resellers and affiliates. Affiliates are responsible for the largest part of this 35 percent. This is not surprising since there are millions of affiliates all over the world while small site hosting providers and resellers are much lower in numbers.
So, what now?
My advice is to not "consult" others online unless it's a close friend who can be trusted. It would be better not to believe online evaluations by experts who probably earn commissions when you purchase, it's also recommended not to believe customers or ex-customers online. It is advisable to ignore this online source of stories from which it has been proven that approximately 50 percent is likely not based on the truth. The possible cause of this situation is the more than fierce competition among hundreds of thousands of companies, including their affiliates and their resellers which seems also to be the reason why pricing is so low. A reliable solution could be to select a website hosting service with a low client cancellation rate which usually means that their customer satisfaction rate is high.
A possible solution
I know that my own web hosting service probably has the lowest customer cancellation rate. It are two sister companies hosting my USA and UK web sites. They belong to the LiquidnetLimited group with fast data centers all over the world that can be found in, among others, the USA, UK, Australia, Finland and Bulgaria with 99.99 percent Uptime Guarantee. Their support team consists of highly trained IT engineers, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. They have fast and professional technical support that is able to resolve problems in minutes, no matter how complicated. This company rescues good webmasters from bad web hosts. Technical support helps new clients with everything if needed, such as site transfer to the new account, file uploading, name server pointing and testing, free of charge. This company wants new clients to succeed online because they know that they will earn more if their customers are successful. This is an attitude that other web hosting providers should have as well, but it looks as if many of them most likely don't care. New accounts are backed up by a No Questions Asked 30 Day Money Back Guarantee so you could try my own web hosting provider risk free. Please note that I don't earn from this recommendation. I'm simply upset about the online review scam and I want to help others to prevent them from being victimized by scammers, which is exactly what happened to myself a few years ago. You can visit my provider by clicking the infographic at the top of this page.
So we now know that the reliability of a published experience is not always obvious. As said above, study shows that more than 50% of reviews by web hosting customers and experts is not real. They are placed by phony customers or smart business people acting as experts. These experts and clients earn money from their activities. Companies are hiring more and more people or they hire other companies to post positive comments. Usually false profiles are created for this purpose after which the phantom story can be posted.
The details.
What was new to me is the fact that there are even (illegal) agencies specifically aimed at creating bogus users and phoney online web space experiences. As said before, these agencies are hired by marketers to promote their website hosting activities. Also, Facebook likes and Google's Plus are being sold in bulk. As a result, the popularity of a web hosting company is blown up to bigger proportions than it is in reality. Although a number of hosting opinion sites, indicate that reviews are checked, posting a fake experience appears to be simple. A registration with a valid e-mail address is all that is required to post a comment. Nevertheless, a false online review often has one or more of the following characteristics which makes it possible to recognize them:
The user registration date mostly is recent.
Exclamation marks are used in a reaction to emphasize the positive assessment.
Also, these fabricated hosting opinions are often vague, so it is unlikely that the person actually had experience with the web hosting service.
Another technique being applied is the "question and answer" technique. Here the fictitious reviewer first asks a question like, "Who has used their services, I am curious!". Less than a day later, the same culprit responds enthusiastically from a different user account: "I have been using them for many years. . . . . etc." without technical details.
Upon deeper examination, there are sometimes dozens of identical reviews at the same time being sent from the same IP address.
How to protect yourself against fake opinions?
Fake online reviews of web hosts are difficult to combat. There is often no control over fictitious user data and it is possible for anyone to sign up with an email address. For major review sites it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify a fabricated review. They develop algorithms for their sites to recognize fake reviews based on sentence structure, IP address and word usage, but these algorithms are not perfect. Recognizing and combating fake reviews is not easy. Here comes the downside of anonymity on the Internet into play: it's easy to assume another identity on the Web. It is difficult or even impossible to find out the true identity of the person or party who placed a counterfeit review. These persons or parties can therefore not be held accountable for their behavior or be held liable for the emotional and financial damage to the new hosting customer who did not expect to be disappointed after reading positive news about his or her new provider.
Conclusion
My advice is to just ignore website hosting reviews. Presumably, it's better to do your own research instead of relying on the Internet where much is untrue. And I realize that this is not an easy task. There are currently millions of reviews online which makes it almost impossible to get correct results after doing it all yourself. Personally I ignored all related search terms. To find my ideal service provider, I simply did a very direct search for web hosts with low customer cancellation percentages, hence the infographic you see at the top of this page. However, for those who are not interested in the infographic, I will write one more article on this subject. This next article will explain how to do this research and how to find the best website hosting service for your requirements. I can already tell you the tip of the iceberg: It's all about testing them which is difficult and time consuming. If you want more explanation you can watch the video below made by someone else.
If you have no time for research you could make use of the advantage of visiting my own web hosting company so that you can have a new provider in minutes. On the other hand I realize that this method also has a disadvantage and that is that this recommendation is one-sided. Last but not least I would like to emphasize that this article is not waterproof for one more reasons because, from the moment that other hosts start publishing their cancellation rates as well, it could be that theirs is even lower, right?
Here are some honest, genuine reviews from real hosting customers.
I hope that you, as reader of below genuine and honest testimonials regarding web hosting accounts, not only will enjoy the stories submitted overtime by some of the company's loyal customers, but that you will also become one of them. Now I can hear you say that personal customer experiences that are placed on one of the web sites that are owned by the host (the web host owns this website), cannot be trusted because these evaluations and remarks are always positive. True, it is an obvious disadvantage of this kind of recommendations. I understand that and agree with you. On the other hand I would like to emphasize that the client reviews and messages published on this page are all positive for one simple reason: the company never received a negative one. I say that in all honesty and would appreciate it if you would keep that in mind. I would also like to say that the advantage of tribute sites like this one, is the fact that, generally spoken, you are dealing with real existing customers. This is in sharp contrast to all those web hosting review sites that regularly publish fake expert or customer reviews, and also in sharp contrast to all those comparison sites that earn commissions. Doesn't that make this a better place? Last but not least, please come back now and then because this page is regularly updated with new testimonials. And I promise that, if ever there's a negative testimony, I will not hesitate to publish that one immediately on this page. Thanks for taking some time to read what others are writing about the company and I hope to welcome you soon as one of their satisfied clients because I think that you and your business deserve the best!
Real web hosting reviews of existing customers.
Dick Detering: "I have been their customer since 2011. For me this Linux web hosting provider is the World's very best web hosting company. That is the reason why the group of Internet Specialists of which I'm a member, decided to dedicate this blog to our web host. The company offers a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee so why not simply try them out? There's no risk at all!"
Peter Bennett: "Let me start by saying that I love this business! I purchased my first web hosting package 6 years ago. Since then I have also signed up others because I have a web design company so I am dealing with individuals and companies who are interested in having their own website. The first thing I always tell them is that their website is going to be hosted by the best provider in the world. This year I have signed up 12 companies and 4 individuals. The in-house web hosting Control Panel is easy to use and everything loads very fast. With the company's Control Panel you just click a button and you get what you want. On a scale of one to ten this service deserves a ten! Their support ticketing service is like no other. And there is hardly any waiting time when you call the company. My thanks go out to Ricky and Carlos. To me they have been very helpful technical support engineers. Congratulations on your awesome service."
Sylvester Finley: "I run a large fan website for Madonna, which takes a lot of time and resources. With her popularity, I suddenly noticed that numerous people started linking to my site. The problem was getting out of hand, because I started exceeding the available bandwidth. All it took was one mention to your technical support department and your team went to work to find a good solution. And now my site is completely protected from the misuse of others, and I no longer have the headache of dealing with bandwidth problems. Thank you so much for solving my problem."
Jason Smith, Sr: "We just want to send a note to let you know how pleased we are with your top hosting services. Me and my partner have a web design company in NYC, and both of us have been very satisfied with the level of quality of your technical support and your development team. All of our websites are perfect without any downtime. Keep up the good work!"
Jerry S. Morin: "I've used my account last year for anything you can imagine: group collaboration, personal site, storage of my college work, projects and as a tool to help me learn web programming. Now, I'm a high school teacher, using my hosting account to host a course management system. I never have to worry about loading times or downtimes and my students love it."
Carl C. Lovett: "As always, awesome support even at 2:30 am New Years Day!"
Taylor Flint: "I've now been hosting with your company for 7 years. I run an Internet business that requires extensive work. I can always count on you to keep my sites up and running and to give me technical support. I've had several bad experiences with other web hosts. Am happy that I've finally found a reliable one. "
Dan Thompson: "I have had my blog hosted by them for more than 2 years and I haven't experienced any downtime. Their website statistics are excellent too. I would highly recommend this company to anyone."
Jing Wang: "I am writing this website hosting review to tell the world that there's only one provider who has the lowest account cancellation % which means that the company has the highest customer satisfaction rate of all and that is you!"
Beau Hardick: "After being with your company for 2 years, I decided to create a site about you. You are leading the pack in the entire hosting industry and your price is unbeatable for what your company has to offer."
Jesse Martin: "I've had other webhosting providers and nothing can compare to you."
Belle Ross: "The stability of your web servers, the quality of technical and customer support, and your low price has me coming back for renewal of my VPS hosting all the time. Thank you very much for a job well done."
Clint Westwood: "You are offering exceptional value and top service. I highly recommend you to anyone for website hosting solutions. I know that you have done a great job for my webhosting needs."
John Miles: "This hosting provider is fantastic! Their customer service simply couldn't be better. I love the company's staff for its integrity and kindness."
Rosita Rivera: "I have to say, after searching the Web for a good web hosting service, that your serices were the one I had to fall for. You helped me to set up my account and to upload my files. I didn't know that such a good help existed."
Zim Martin: "This host's very affordable fees have made my website a long term reality. I appreciate your extra options such as Wordpress and Joomla."
Brian Olson: "I'm very pleased with the website response time, uptime, and technical support! What you can't do with the click of a button, you can contact your great team. I've been hosting with you for 4 years now. I just wanted to say thanks, and I'm happy to be one of your customers."
Henry Card: "When I was comparing hosts, I was not satisfied, even once. But I didn't know about your company. Then I saw your advertisement on Google and I compared your company with the other ones. This is how I discovered that your company is simply better, in all respects. After I had purchased my web address, a representative of yours called me and explained me how to login and how to set up a website. What a great personal service!"
David Johnson: "Since I came to you I've had nothing but exceptional service. Your support has been great whenever there were issues, and your live chat answered any questions I had about your service before I opened an account. The regular improvements to your control panel are very much appreciated, and it's a better system than C-Panel."
Willie Neverland: "For me it's all about web space and bandwidth. Your company offers the best features and I will never leave you, that's how simple it is!"
Paul Feathers: "First I searched online to see what web hosting companies were available and with so many providers to choose from, I became tensed about not being able to decide. While I was reading the homepage, all of a sudden Emily, one of their sales people, popped up on my screen. She was able to guide me through the purchasing process and to make me feel comfortable. Now my blog is online, I am sure that it will be hosted by this great company for many years to come."
Jerry Brothers: "My appreciation for this provider started with their very affordable prices and fast loading times. These are the main reasons why I started moving my domains to their web servers. I encountered very professional customer support. I can communicate with their people day and night and I always get excellent advice. They fully understand the products and services they represent and are always friendly and competent. It's clear that the company's employees are very well trained.
Chris Eisenhart: "Thank you for your invitation to write a hosting review. I have been with your hosting for about 6 years now, and I must say that I'm very pleased with your service. I switched to you from another host who charged me $25 a month with less features and lower quality web hosting than your $5.95 package! I'm now saving $228 a year while enjoying a much better website hosting service. Thanks!"
Rainier Hoffner: "After many bad experiences with other hosting companies we found your firm and we decided to try it since your offer of bandwidth etc., for such a low price, was very compelling. At first we were not 100% sure, if you could accomplish top quality web hosting in the United Kingdom at such low pricing, but now, after several years, we know it for sure, you can do it and are doing it the way we want and even better. No downtime at all and only very few problems that were easily solved. We trust you for the full 100% with our business and we recommended your great company to our partners and everybody else."