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1. The Website Owner is Getting Paid
In most cases, the owner of the top 10 hosting website is listing the companies in order of highest payout. In other words, the web host that pays the most for each mentioned sale will be in the # 1 position. While this clearly means that the recommendations are biased (and most consumers are usually seeking unbiased information) it does not mean that some of the web hosting companies are not worthy choices. For instance, you will find HostMonster and BlueHost at the top of many top 10 lists. These two brands are sister companies that have been providing reliable hosting services for quite some time. In fact, I can speak from experience that the combination of price, features, and service is very competitive. If you have a basic website, these web hosts will more than suffice.
On the other hand, there are good companies missing from these top 10 lists because they do not pay referral fees, or if they do, the payout is not high enough to justify inclusion. A good example is ICDSoft; I've had a very positive experience with them over the past couple years. The company provides great uptime and the online customer service is lightning quick. It's also very easy to set-up a reseller account that allows you to host multiple sites very affordably – the more sites you add, the lower the price per website. The only caveat is that phone support is not provided, so be sure you are comfortable with online support before joining.
The bottom line is you should consider hosts from various sources in creating a final list of choices.
2. The Website Owner is not a Web Hosting Expert
Most top 10 web hosting lists are on websites owned by affiliate marketers. Affiliate marketers promote products and services in all kinds of different industries and product categories with the end goal of generating a commission on everything they sell. While many of these individuals have some web hosting experience due to the sheer fact that they own websites, few are really experts in the field. That being said, these folks generally have enough understanding of the subject to seem very knowledgeable to someone with a limited background in web hosting.
I recommend checking a few top 10 hosting lists and then visiting some webhostingtalk to ask questions. Real web hosting experts tend to frequent these venues.
3. Unlimited Disk Space & Bandwidth Do Not Exist
Most of the web hosting companies being promoted in top 10 hosting lists offer "unlimited" disk space and bandwidth. Did you know that less than 2 years ago, these companies were only offering maximum of 1,500 Gigabytes in each category? The truth is that many web hosts now engage in "overselling" – that is, marketing unlimited resources in certain areas but effectively restricting them through the service agreement that is required during the sign-up process. The overselling phenomenon started with one host trying to differentiate itself from the crowd by offering a little more disk space and bandwidth. This lead to a "snowball" effect in which competitors quickly matched the front runners until everyone reached "unlimited" levels.
In reality, no web host at any price range can provide infinite resources, but most can easily support the average website that uses 20 megabytes of disk space and 10 gigabytes of monthly bandwidth. If you require more, think about a VPS hosting plan or dedicated server.
Copyright 2009 – BigHosts.com
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