Choosing Your Web Hosting Isn’t Like Choosing a Restaurant

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about online review sites. Now, I’m not a big fan of Yelp—but that’s a whole other article. You may have noticed that there are a number of web hosting review sites out there that say they have a hundred thousand real reviews—or something like that. Is that a good thing? I would say no, because you shouldn’t choose your web hosting company like you would choose a restaurant.

Think about it. Yes, there may be some dietary restrictions or there may be a certain cuisine that you don’t care for. But once you get passes that, when choosing a restaurant, you really want to know whether the food is good or not—which in itself could be a very subjective thing.

Web hosting is a very different animal. Whether the hosting is good or bad depends on so many more factors—including just what the goal of your website is going to be, what type of technical experience you have, how much time you can devote to maintaining your site, etc.

But wait a minute you say. What about customer service? Isn’t that similar whether you’re reviewing a restaurant or a web host? Well, yes and no. Sure, in both cases we want prompt and courteous service. But again, with web hosting the situation is more complex. In a restaurant, your main concern with service is that you get the food that you ordered and it’s cooked properly. With web hosting, there are so many more issues that can occur. So again, when evaluating web hosting customer support, there are many more points to consider.

Where is all this leading? Well, the point is that when you’re researching potential web hosts, looking at sites that claim to have thousands of reviews isn’t necessarily the way to go. I admit that I’m biased here, but I feel that it’s much more beneficial to look at reviews that include specific details and illustrations as to just what you get with that web hosting company. And that’s what we try to do here.

We pride ourselves on presenting detailed reviews based on our actual experience with that hosting company. So that’s my rant for the day. Now I think I’ll get something to eat because I’m getting hungry!