The Truth About Top Web Hosting Lists

I’ll admit I’m not all that big on ranking web hosting companies. Although I have participated in the Top 10 List on topratedwebsitehosting.com, there really are a number of reasons you shouldn’t put too much emphasis on where a company ranks on a list.

As an example, I recently read an article in a web magazine that contained their ranked listing of web hosts. The footnote at the bottom of their article instructed you to go to their web page to see the ranking metrics. Surprisingly, when I visited their website, the only criteria or “metrics” they listed were cost, features, and support. Problem was, each hosting company was assigned a value from 1 to 5 but there was no explanation of whether 1 or 5 was best. Even more confusing, the web hosts didn’t seem to be ranked in any logical order—some companies had higher totals, but were ranked lower. And, there was no detailed explanation of what each metric contained.

This gets back to the problems of ranked top lists—there is bound to be some subjectivity in the evaluations, and everyone’s requirements and criteria for an effective web hosting company may be different. What might be important to one webmaster may not be of much concern to another. Case in point, I’ll have a great experience with web hosting company X, other people will agree with me and yet others will swear that company X is horrible.

The bottom line here is: Although a list of top web hosts can be a starting point to your search for hosting, don’t get too caught up in one company being ranked two slots ahead of another. Keep your own requirements in mind and focus on finding the right match for your website. Any ranking list should consider at a minimum features, value, uptime, speed, and support. But again, be sure to study all of the information about your prospective web hosting company—particularly when you know your website will need additional power or support in certain areas.