How We Review Web Hosting Companies
OUR COMMITMENT TO ACCURACY
At WPShout, we take our web hosting reviews and comparisons seriously. Like, really seriously. After all, we’ve done a lot of them over the years.
We understand that choosing the right hosting provider can be a hard and complicated task, and we want to help make that process easier for our readers. That’s why we created (or rather evolved) a comprehensive methodology for testing and reviewing web hosting companies.
Here’s how we do it:
Since 2009, our team has reviewed 50+ hosting providers
Honest expert reviews
We work with a team of experts who have years of experience in the web hosting industry. We trust them to provide their honest opinions.
Real user feedback
We gather feedback from real users by conducting a recurring hosting survey, and also by analyzing reviews from various online platforms.
Performance monitoring
We sign up for hosting plans and use them to host our own websites. We continuously monitor their uptimes and loading times.
Real-time updates
We regularly update our reviews to ensure that they reflect the most current information available.
OUR REVIEW PROCESS
TL;DR: To determine what the best web hosting services are at any given time, we look through the popular companies on the market and sign up for the most appealing offers from each company. Next, we do a series of tests:
- ⚙️ We set up a standard website on the server and populate it with example content.
- 🏎️ We test the performance of the host: the load times from various locations around the globe.
- 🔋 We take note of the uptime/downtime numbers across a period of time.
We rate each host based on their price, performance, features available for the price, and user reviews.
Here’s how it works in detail:
1. Purchasing web hosting with our own money
We buy all hosting setups that we test with our own money. We don’t let the company know about our purchase. We also don’t share our site addresses with them.
We want to appear just like any other regular customer.
We maintain active hosting setup with the following companies. For the most part, we pick entry-level hosting plans – since that is what most users also pick.
| Host | Server location |
|---|---|
| Bluehost | Utah, USA 🇺🇸 |
| DreamHost | California, USA 🇺🇸 |
| Flywheel | California, USA 🇺🇸 |
| GoDaddy | Arizona, USA 🇺🇸 |
| GreenGeeks | Netherlands 🇳🇱 |
| Hosting.com | Michigan, USA 🇺🇸 |
| Hostinger | Netherlands 🇳🇱 |
| HostGator | Utah, USA 🇺🇸 |
| InMotion Hosting | Virginia, USA 🇺🇸 |
| Kinsta | South Carolina, USA 🇺🇸 |
| Namecheap | USA 🇺🇸 |
| Rocket | East, USA 🇺🇸 |
| ScalaHosting | Europe 🇪🇺 |
| SiteGround | Netherlands 🇳🇱 |
| WP Engine | Oregon, USA 🇺🇸 |
We began our hosting performance tests around 2019, initially just comparing Bluehost and SiteGround. Over time, our testing expanded to 15+ different hosting accounts, which we maintain solely to measure and compare performance.
These hosting setups are used for reviews, comparisons, hosting roundups, and other research pieces. We use them for all content where firsthand experience is important and valuable.
More details for geeks:
- We don’t do anything to configure those servers in any specific way beyond the default, out-the-gate config set by the hosts themselves. This gives each host an equal chance and doesn’t interfere with the experience that the average user would get.
- We don’t try to make the server configs resemble one another. Again, we want to reward hosts that go the extra mile by fine-tuning their default server configuration. Our reasoning is that most users don’t fiddle with server settings much, and thus whatever is there put in place by the host from day one, stays over the long haul.
- Our site addresses are not public. We just don’t want anyone interfering with them and skewing the results over time.
2. Running example test sites
Each hosting setup houses an example, template website built on WordPress.
- 🎨 All sites use the same theme (Neve) and starter design (see below).
- ✍️ All sites have the same test content, which is the stock content of the starter site design.
- 🔌 All sites also have the same set of popular plugins to add extra load. Right now, the stack includes: All-In-One Security, Starter Sites & Templates by Neve, WP Statistics, WPForms Lite, Yoast SEO.
We update those sites and WordPress itself every month – this includes WordPress core, plugins, and theme.
3. Testing host performance
The two main parameters we test are uptime and load time.
- We track the total loading time (“time to fully loaded”) primarily. We’ve decided to do it like so to emulate the average user’s experience – focus on the time to see the site fully, instead of relying on host vanity metrics like TTFB.
- We test our sites from six global locations.
- We emulate an actual web connection and user browser.
- We do five individual tests per site per location, and then average out the numbers to get the final “typical” load time.
- N. Virginia, USA 🇺🇸
- California, USA 🇺🇸
- Utah, USA 🇺🇸
- London, UK 🇬🇧
- Paris, France 🇫🇷
- Mumbai, India 🇮🇳
A typical hosting performance table you might have seen in one of our posts looks something like this:
| East Coast USA: 0.76s ⭐ | West Coast USA: 1.13s |
| Central USA: 0.96s ⭐ | London, UK: 0.19s ⭐ |
| Paris, France: 0.36s ⭐ | Mumbai, India: 1.13s |
We also keep track of uptime. We use UptimeRobot for that. It monitors uptime 24/7 and records every second of downtime.
You can actually check the uptimes for all our test accounts on our hosting status page. If you want to see how a specific hosting provider is performing, just click on its name and see the dedicated page.
Server location vs testing location 🥊
As seen above, our hosting setups are distributed across several regions, and we test their performance from six specific locations around the globe. These various combinations directly influence our results.
Because the primary server can only be hosted in a single location, individual loading times may vary, especially when measured from a distance.
Traditionally in web hosting, the further a user is from the server, the longer it takes for the site to load.
We believe this is not a bug in our testing methodology, but a feature.
We aim to demonstrate the realistic experience of a typical customer. Since customers can choose only a single server location, increased latency from other parts of the world is to be expected. Our goal is not to make hosting companies look as good as possible, but to provide as authentic a picture as possible.
That being said, those global load times don’t always have to be worse – at least not for everyone. Some hosting companies mitigate latency by enabling global optimizations by default for all accounts. We consider this fair game … if a host implements features that improve the experience for all users, those improvements will be reflected in our data.
4. Other important factors
Performance alone isn’t the sole factor that we take into consideration when writing our reviews and comparisons. There are others at play too:
One of the key aspects is, of course, pricing. We review the pricing options and value of each hosting company we test. We do this focusing not only on sticker prices but also on additional hidden fees, and differences in renewal prices.
The features offered by a hosting provider are also crucial to consider. We evaluate the features provided by each hosting company, including the amount of storage and bandwidth, the number of domains allowed, and the availability of tools like website builders and ecommerce platforms.
In addition to our own research, we also conduct a recurring hosting survey (the only such survey in the industry). In the survey, we ask real users about their experiences with different hosting providers. We take into account the feedback we receive from those users.
We believe that thorough, honest testing is the foundation of trustworthy recommendations. While no testing process is perfect, we continually refine our methods to provide you with the most reliable information possible to make informed decisions for your WordPress site.
Last but not least, we regularly update our reviews to ensure they reflect the most current information available.
Have questions about our testing methodology? Feel free to reach out to us here.
Interested in learning more about our editorial standards? Read our Editorial Policy.
