Website Host Reviews - Hosts I Have Used Personally

Which website hosts are the best?

With the search capabilities of the internet, you would think that this question would be pretty easy to answer...but it isn't.

Why?

Because there are so many "review" websites out there that just want to sell website hosting plans and don't really care too much about how good a host is.

They only care about how much they will get paid for promoting them.

They post fake website host reviews or ratings in the hope that you will just pick one.

If you have done a search before, I'm sure you know what I am talking about. These sites are at the top of the searches because their owners know how to optimize their pages to rank well on the search engines.

This is great for the owners of these websites, but not so great for the rest of us. Finding an honest review is difficult to come by and I have spent many hours searching.

In all that time, I only found a couple of hosting review websites that were worth reading.

Even those sites took a long time to get through because they were not organized very well.

So in the interest of saving you time, I will give you the results of my hours and hours of research, as well as my own personal experiences with some website hosts.

I just want to cut through all the BS and finally provide some useful information.

Hope this helps!

If you were wondering what qualifies me to talk about this subject, that is a valid question.

I have been designing websites since 1999 but I have no formal training. I have completed projects for my own businesses, large corporations and small companies.

During this time, I have gained a ton of experience and a greater understanding of what works and what doesn't.

I have used a handful of website hosts, most were OK, a couple were pretty bad. When I first started out, I did what most people do and just pick a host that looks good.

Then I got a little smarter and started reading website host reviews to see which ones were good.

I found out however, that even though a website has a high rating on a couple of websites, it does not necessarily mean that it really is a good host.

The review may be fake or old. So the only way to really find out is to actually use the hosting service.

First of all, I'll start with a couple hosts that I would stay away from.

Back in the day, IPower won a lot of awards and was apparently a really good website host. Since then, something happened and their service has deteriorated considerably.

I was with them for about 3 years, mostly because I was too lazy to move my blog.

But finally I had enough with the issues and they raised the price on me, so it was time to go.

When I was with them, I noticed that my website would go down or be really slow more often than normal. With any website host, there will be some down time, nobody is perfect.

However, with the better hosts, this down time is usually not noticeable. With IPower, it happened a lot.

When my blog was running, editing and loading were noticeably slow for a good portion of the time.

This was unacceptable and like I mentioned before, when they raised the price, I had enough.

Hopefully they have upgraded their service since the writing of this article, but I would stay away.

This is a review that has to be written.

Why?

Because this company is a straight up scam! At one of my jobs, I inherited this hosting provider from the previous Website Manager.

It was OK while we were using them. The reliability wasn't the best but it was better than what I experienced at IPower.

However, when it came time to change hosts, they wouldn't let us do it!

They wouldn't release our domain name or allow us to point it to another server. We called and emailed them countless times and they never responded.

Finally, we had to go through other organizations to be able to get control of our domain name and change hosts.

What a nightmare!

Again, I hope that they clean up their act, but I have seen similar complains from other people, so again, I would just stay away.

There are so many other better options out there.

So this brings me to a more positive topic, the website host that I recommend.

After locating some real website host reviews, I narrowed my search down to a couple of hosts. These hosts were ICDSoft and HostGator.

Both had excellent reviews and the reviews seemed legit, so I gave them both a try. I could read reviews until I was blue in the face but I would never know until I actually used their services.

Here are the categories that I judged them on:

Website management tools

HostGator was head and shoulders above ICDSoft. HostGator's cpanel has everything you could ever want. There are about 50 applications available for installation (including the all-important Wordpress), email controls and the file manager can even unzip files, just to name a few of the many benefits.

The ICDSoft cpanel has 3 applications pre-loaded and it feels like I am using a website host from 1999. I had to install Wordpress manually and configure the settings manually. What a pain!

Winner: HostGator

Loading Speed

Both hosts loaded at about the same speed, there was no noticeable difference.

Winner: Tie

Reliability

Both hosts were very reliable with no noticeable down time during my test period.

Winner: Tie

Support

I was kind of nervous with ICDSoft because they use a ticket system as their sole means of support. I have had bad experiences in the past where I had to wait a couple of days to get a response, so I wasn't expecting much.

They did surprise me though. All questions were responded to within the hour and many times just a couple of minutes after I submitted them. Amazing implementation of a ticket system.

HostGator does offer live phone support and 24/7 online chat or email. They are also very helpful and my issues were resolved quickly.

In this case, I would have to give the edge to HostGator. I have found out that when you have serious problems, you need to have an open conversation going on the phone or via online chat.

Sending emails back and forth can take too long and is cumbersome.

Winner: HostGator

Cost

As you would probably expect, the cost for these two services was about the same, $6 per month. Very affordable.

Winner: Tie

Conclusion

They are both reliable hosts, but HostGator wins in the areas of support and website management tools.

These areas will be the most beneficial to people who want to create and manage a website, but may not be very technical.

However, even technical people can appreciate better support and website management tools. I know I do.

This is why I wholeheartedly recommend HostGator for your website hosting needs.

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