Skytopia > Projects > Technology/science articles > Finding the best web site host using Google

Finding the best web site host the
Googalistic way

Article published 14/10/2005 by Daniel White.

KEY: Google searches:
Negative
N1 = "i hate hostx"
N2 = "hostx sucks"
N3 = "hostx sux"
N4 = "avoid hostx"
Positive
P1 = "i love hostx"
P2 = "hostx rocks"
P3 = "hostx is great"
P4 = "hostx is * great"
P5 = "recommend hostx"
So you want to find a decent host for your forthcoming site eh? What would you look for in a host before taking the plunge? If you didn't want to take any chances, you may do some research by looking at various web hosting review sites. More likely though, you would probably look on message boards, forums, and ask friends for their opinion. This site takes that concept to its logical conclusion. We've scavenged the whole web using Google, and searched for various positive and negative phrases such as "I love host x" or "host x sucks". This way, we can find a rough consensus towards a particular host if there's enough data available.

Naturally, the question will arise; how can one be sure the results containing glowing praise about a host are genuine and accurate? Of course, the conclusions can never be perfect due to lack of data, word/service ambiguity, bias, and plain advertising. But it turns out that the vast majority of comments are written in forums and message boards. Under such circumstances, posts are more often genuine than not, and moderators are likely to detect if a recommendation is spam or not.

All of the web searches were made during the last couple of weeks of September 2005, and a quick check now (mid October 05) shows that Google gives results are more or less the same as before. If you are reading this in 2006/07, you'll probably find that there are more results overall, but that the ratio of good results to bad for a particular host will remain fairly similar (unless a company's service is overhauled). You can always verify the results for yourself anyway - In the main table, you'll see the exact number of searches I made in Google for a particular search term.

Top 4 free web hosts

Host
Name		 Basic
specs		 Pop.Negative
to
positive		 SCORE
4bravenet.com50 MB 1.5GB $0
1000 MB 30 GB $4.95
5000 MB 100 GB $6.95
467165 / 253

1.482

3doteasy.com100 MB 1 GB $0
1000 MB 20 GB $7.95
20000 MB ^^ GB $9.95
6515 / 35

1.652

2micfo.com50 MB 1000 GB $0
1000 MB 40 GB $5.95
2000 MB 80 GB $10.95
200 / 15

2.545

1directnic.com20 MB ^^ GB $0
20 MB 2 GB $15.00
460 / 32

6.542

It wasn't easy. I had to filter out Google duplicates using custom made software, and look for spam (or just plain advertising) among the results. Searches such as "recommend host x" were particularly problematic, so in these kind of cases, each and every result was checked by hand to see if it was a genuine post from a real person. For full details on my approach towards filtering and phrase selection, see towards the end of the page.

Table details.

The gigantic table below sorts hosts by how good or bad they supposedly are. (If you want to see the hosts sorted by popularity instead, then see this page). You'll find that some high ranking hosts may not have the specs you require (like if you want more than 20 MB, or higher than 1 GB of bandwidth per month). Equally, many of the free hosts are lowly ranked due to the obvious frustrations of free hosting, but since they're free, they're worth considering (especially if you're a beginner to site creation and want to test the waters). If you're going that route, Bravenet, Doteasy, Micfo and Directnic (relatively unheard of names) seem to be the best here. Angelfire is the worst, with Tripod following closely behind :-)

The score

At its most basic level, the score is the number of positive comments divided by the number of negative comments. But greater weighting is given to hosts with many members, thus increasing the 'reliability' of the given score. In other words, hosts with a normally good mark, but who don't have a large internet presence will be marked down (due to the risk factor). And for the same reason, a minor host's score will increase if their score was normally low.

For the curious, the following formulae was used:

reliability = (popularityOfHost/40) / (1+popularityOfHost/40)
ratio = (p1+p2+p3+p4+p5/2+1) / (n1+n2+n3+n4+1)
SCORE = ratio ^ reliability
With that out the way, we can continue with a description of the table elements. The basic specs only give a rough indication of the type of hosting you'll get. You'll need to further look at the site in question to find out if extras include PHP, CGI/perl, MySQL,
Key Google searches: The phrases and colours below correspond with the numbers in the main table. Basically, the numbers represent the number of times a phrase appeared in Google. The number in brackets is the total number of results before filtering.
Negative
N1 = "i hate hostx"
N2 = "hostx sucks"
N3 = "hostx sux"
N4 = "avoid hostx"
Positive
P1 = "i love hostx"
P2 = "hostx rocks"
P3 = "hostx is great"
P4 = "hostx is * great"
P5 = "recommend hostx"
number of email accounts, email POP / SMTP Access, FTP access, number of domains hosted, access to raw logs, free domain registration/transfer, and other special discounts. I'll leave that up to you as there's no way I'm including all that data in the table :) If you see '^^ GB' or '^^ MB', that means there's supposedly no limit to the disk space and bandwidth (unmetered), but in reality, there will always be. Always read the terms & conditions and smallprint from each website for the full story (look at the TOS limitations on Hostultra's free hosting for example!). Finally, if you see MBhd or MBvd instead of MB, that means it's a dedicated or virtual server (and is therefore going to be much more expensive!).


Host Name Basic specs:
space, bandwidth,
and cost		 PopularityNegative
to positive		 SCOREN1N2N3N4 P1P2P3P4P5
63angelfire.com20 MB ? GB $0
25 MB 5 GB $4.95
150 MB 30 GB $14.95
873706 / 127

0.195

193
(242)		363
(467)		126
(186)		24
(28)		25
(58)		22
(26)		17
(25)		24
(34)		79
(113)
62tripod.com20 MB 1 GB $0
25 MB 5 GB $4.95
150 MB 30 GB $15
1020781 / 163

0.223

211
(260)		414
(549)		102
(158)		54
(73)		40
(138)		24
(109)		12
(189)		12
(112)		151
(213)
61geocities.com15 MB 3 GB $0
25 MB 5 GB $4.95
2000 MB 25 GB $11.95
17531336 / 334

0.258

422
(567)		505
(677)		300
(439)		109
(191)		43
(105)		42
(56)		84
(136)		82
(124)		166
(230)
60cihost.com3000 MB ^^ GB $14
5000 MB ^^ GB $25
10000 MB ^^ GB $40
4940 / 6

0.377

3
(3)		21
(33)		3
(3)		13
(17)		0
(0)		0
(0)		2
(2)		1
(3)		6
(20)
59interland.com5000 MB 20 GB $9.95
11679 / 21

0.389

5
(7)		51
(85)		1
(2)		22
(45)		0
(0)		0
(0)		4
(6)		2
(12)		31
(66)
58freewebs.com40 MB 0.5 GB $0
659436 / 170

0.412

158
(246)		230
(454)		40
(61)		8
(10)		31
(46)		14
(19)		39
(61)		33
(51)		106
(155)
57easyspace.com500 MB 10 GB $3.67
1000 MB 20 GB $12.46
5000 MB 50 GB $26.40
3226 / 3

0.427

5
(7)		10
(14)		0
(0)		11
(15)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		6
(20)
56fortunecity.com25 MB 2 GB $4.95
500 MB 12 GB $9.95
2500 72 GB $14.95
9463 / 25

0.531

20
(27)		37
(49)		5
(7)		1
(1)		7
(10)		3
(4)		2
(3)		7
(180)		12
(21)
55hostultra.com^^ MB ^^ GB $0
300 MB 7 GB $1.67
500 MB 20 GB $3.33
800 MB 30 GB $5
300MB 7 GB $4.17
6942 / 19

0.625

10
(13)		29
(49)		3
(5)		0
(0)		4
(8)		1
(1)		5
(8)		2
(4)		15
(26)
54netfirms.com500 MB 10 GB $4.95
2000 MB 100 GB $9.95
14075 / 42

0.647

17
(26)		46
(73)		7
(10)		5
(6)		3
(7)		3
(9)		10
(16)		4
(15)		45
(87)
53brinkster.com1500 MB 35 GB $4.95
3000 MB 75 GB $7.95
5000 MB 150 GB $17.95
313165 / 103

0.66

44
(59)		104
(152)		14
(21)		3
(4)		19
(27)		14
(20)		15
(27)		10
(26)		90
(168)
52globat.com10000 MB 300 GB $7.95
8445 / 27

0.723

6
(8)		27
(51)		3
(4)		9
(14)		3
(7)		3
(5)		5
(8)		5
(14)		23
(98)
51dot5hosting.com2000 MB 50 GB $5
5000 MB 80 GB $1
1711 / 3

0.746

0
(0)		10
(25)		0
(0)		1
(1)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		1
(1)		5
(12)
50canaca.com10000 MB 200 GB $3.95
20000 MB 400 GB $7.95
30000 MB 600 GB $16.95
3519 / 11

0.787

3
(4)		12
(19)		0
(0)		4
(8)		2
(2)		1
(1)		1
(1)		2
(3)		10
(16)
49fasthosts.com750 MB ? GB $7.02
2000 MB ? GB $14.06
5000 MB ? GB $28.14
3115 / 8

0.796

2
(3)		1
(1)		1
(1)		11
(17)		1
(1)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		15
(19)
48ixwebhosting.com2500 MB 100 GB $4.95
5000 MB 300 GB $6.99
10000 MB 500 GB $12.99
139 / 3

0.798

0
(0)		4
(5)		0
(0)		5
(7)		0
(0)		0
(0)		1
(1)		1
(1)		2
(12)
47omnis.com1000 MB 100 GB $6.95
2000 MB 200 GB $9.95
2512 / 8

0.886

0
(7)		4
(7)		3
(5)		5
(16)		2
(20)		1
(4)		0
(0)		1
(10)		9
(27)
46ipower.com1000 MB 25 GB $3.95
3000 MB 50 GB $7.95
6000 MB 80 GB $12.95
3215 / 13

0.942

4
(7)		10
(16)		0
(0)		1
(1)		1
(1)		1
(1)		4
(9)		3
(5)		8
(28)
45ipowerweb.com3000 MB 50 GB $7.95
10646 / 43

0.961

6
(8)		20
(30)		0
(0)		20
(32)		7
(18)		4
(4)		10
(20)		6
(44)		33
(96)
44hypermart.net200 MB 2.5 GB $6.95
1000 MB 10 GB $19.95
1200 MB 30 GB $29.95
5022 / 20

0.963

6
(8)		10
(13)		3
(4)		3
(5)		2
(3)		0
(0)		5
(13)		6
(7)		15
(21)
431and1.com1000 MB 25 GB $4.99
2000 MB 50 GB $9.99
4000 MB 100 GB $19.99
15366 / 64

0.982

13
(18)		34
(54)		2
(3)		17
(24)		12
(18)		8
(10)		15
(24)		7
(13)		45
(90)
42aplus.net50 MB 1 GB $5.95
2000 MB 50 GB $9.95
3715 / 14

0.984

2
(3)		5
(8)		1
(1)		7
(11)		0
(0)		4
(7)		3
(5)		0
(0)		15
(49)
41startlogic.com5000 MB 100 GB $5.87
155 / 5

1.0

1
(1)		4
(21)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		10
(36)
40readyhosting.com500 MB ^^ GB $8.25
500 MB ^^ GB $16.50
3414 / 14

1.015

2
(4)		7
(15)		3
(4)		2
(2)		1
(2)		1
(1)		3
(8)		4
(6)		11
(23)
39hostsave.com2000 MB 200 GB $8.95
5000 MB 500 GB $12.95
2912 / 12

1.015

0
(0)		9
(19)		0
(0)		3
(5)		1
(1)		1
(1)		3
(4)		3
(5)		9
(26)
38addr.com1000 MB 40 GB $7.95
3000 MB 60 GB $9.95
5000 MB 80 GB $14.95
2410 / 11

1.033

2
(2)		1
(1)		0
(0)		7
(19)		2
(2)		2
(2)		1
(1)		3
(3)		6
(15)
37powweb.com5000 MB 300 GB $7.77
14562 / 65

1.043

2
(3)		48
(93)		2
(2)		10
(13)		12
(19)		11
(16)		12
(22)		13
(31)		35
(82)
36serverbeach.com80000 MBhd 2000 GB $119
3714 / 16

1.061

2
(4)		9
(14)		0
(0)		3
(11)		2
(4)		1
(2)		2
(4)		4
(14)		14
(30)
35midphase.com5000 MB ^^ GB $7.95
238 / 11

1.11

0
(0)		6
(9)		0
(0)		2
(5)		1
(1)		1
(1)		3
(10)		2
(11)		8
(25)
34jodohost.com400 MB 10 GB $4.95
800 MB 20 GB $9.95
1600 MB 40 GB $19.95
174 / 10

1.265

0
(0)		1
(2)		0
(0)		3
(4)		2
(6)		1
(1)		2
(3)		2
(4)		6
(17)
33valueweb.com5000 MB 100 GB $24.95
20000 MB 500 GB $49.95
50000 MB 1000 GB $99.95
225 / 11

1.278

0
(0)		4
(9)		0
(0)		1
(1)		1
(2)		0
(0)		3
(8)		1
(2)		12
(33)
32hostway.com600 MB 50 GB $13.95
2000 MB ^^ GB $44.95
5416 / 26

1.318

2
(2)		7
(15)		0
(0)		7
(9)		3
(5)		4
(5)		3
(4)		5
(7)		23
(69)
31hostrocket.com1000 MB 50 GB $7.95
3000 MB 100 GB $11.95
10837 / 55

1.327

5
(8)		26
(78)		0
(0)		6
(10)		9
(22)		11
(19)		9
(21)		10
(28)		32
(5)
30olm.net200 MB 8 GB $6.95
800 MB 20 GB $18.95
339 / 18

1.336

0
(0)		4
(5)		1
(2)		4
(12)		3
(8)		1
(8)		4
(11)		4
(15)		12
(22)
29hostforweb.com200 MB 20 GB $4.95
3000 MB 125 GB $9.95
6000 MB 250 GB $19.95
121 / 7

1.377

0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		1
(1)		1
(1)		0
(0)		1
(1)		1
(1)		8
(25)
28ev1servers.net1000 MB ? GB $10
3000 MB ? GB $30
327 / 15

1.379

0
(0)		2
(4)		0
(0)		5
(8)		2
(3)		1
(1)		1
(1)		2
(4)		19
(33)
27phpwebhosting.com500 MB ^^ GB $9.18
369 / 19

1.404

0
(0)		5
(7)		1
(1)		3
(3)		2
(4)		1
(2)		5
(6)		4
(6)		15
(22)
26hostdime.com1000 MB 15 GB $5.50
3000 MB 30 GB $8.25
8000 MB 60 GB $18.33
^^ MB 100 GB $32.08
349 / 21

1.436

0
(0)		7
(12)		0
(0)		2
(3)		7
(12)		3
(4)		3
(7)		4
(6)		8
(18)
25intermedia.net500 MB 10 GB $4.95
1000 MB 20 GB $9.95
2000 MB 70 GB $34.95
317 / 17

1.442

1
(1)		3
(5)		1
(1)		2
(4)		1
(1)		0
(0)		5
(20)		5
(22)		13
(28)
24hostingzoom.com5000 MB 100 GB $4.95
90 / 6

1.447

0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		3
(3)		0
(0)		0
(0)		1
(1)		5
(17)
23bravenet.com50 MB 1.5GB $0
1000 MB 30 GB $4.95
5000 MB 100 GB $6.95
467165 / 253

1.482

60
(85)		87
(121)		9
(11)		9
(11)		78
(127)		28
(40)		48
(91)		51
(75)		97
(133)
22alentus.com500 MB 10 GB $8.95
1000 MB 25 GB $12.95
100 / 6

1.496

0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		2
(4)		1
(1)		0
(0)		7
(11)
21siteground.com5000 MB 100 GB $5
100 / 7

1.515

0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		1
(1)		1
(1)		1
(1)		1
(1)		6
(13)
20bluehost.com4000 MB 100 GB $6.95
389 / 24

1.562

0
(0)		2
(5)		0
(0)		7
(10)		2
(4)		7
(10)		3
(4)		7
(18)		10
(43)
19liquidweb.com1000 MB 30 GB $12.46
275 / 18

1.607

0
(0)		4
(6)		0
(0)		1
(1)		2
(3)		2
(3)		8
(11)		3
(5)		7
(14)
18doteasy.com100 MB 1 GB $0
1000 MB 20 GB $7.95
20000 MB ^^ GB $9.95
6515 / 35

1.652

10
(13)		4
(5)		0
(0)		1
(1)		9
(13)		1
(1)		4
(7)		6
(8)		30
(60)
17hostmysite.com1000 MB 20 GB $8.95
120 / 9

1.701

0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		2
(3)		0
(0)		0
(0)		4
(12)		6
(34)
16totalchoicehosting.com450 MB 10 GB $4
1000 MB 35 GB $8.95
1500 MB 50 GB $17.95
120 / 9

1.72

0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		3
(3)		1
(1)		3
(5)		0
(0)		5
(12)
15discountasp.net550 MB 14 GB $10
130 / 8

1.737

0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		3
(6)		1
(2)		0
(0)		0
(0)		9
(27)
14maximumasp.com40000 MBhd 200 GB $199
219000 MB 1000 GB $499
130 / 9

1.759

0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		1
(1)		2
(3)		0
(0)		2
(3)		8
(20)
13fatcow.com1000 MB 30 GB $8.25
130 / 10

1.8

0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		3
(5)		3
(3)		1
(1)		0
(0)		6
(6)
12datapipe.com? MBhd ? GB $?
140 / 10

1.883

0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		3
(5)		2
(3)		2
(4)		7
(19)
11asmallorange.com75 MB 3 GB $2.50
1000 MB 25 GB $10
4500 MB 100 GB $30
190 / 10

2.195

0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		1
(1)		0
(0)		0
(0)		1
(1)		17
(29)
10micfo.com50 MB 1000 GB $0
1000 MB 40 GB $5.95
2000 MB 80 GB $10.95
200 / 15

2.545

0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		3
(4)		3
(6)		2
(6)		3
(6)		9
(32)
9westhost.com1000 MB 20 GB $6.95
2000 MB 40 GB $11.95
6500 MB 80 GB $25.95
271 / 19

2.554

0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		1
(2)		3
(4)		0
(0)		4
(4)		6
(8)		13
(37)
8hostgator.com3500 MB 50 GB $6.95
10000 MB 100 GB $14.95
25000 MB 500 GB $74.95
484 / 28

2.633

1
(1)		1
(2)		0
(0)		2
(4)		3
(10)		4
(10)		4
(7)		2
(3)		31
(66)
7site5.com3000 MB 50 GB $9
12000 MB 150 GB $19
525 / 36

2.796

0
(0)		3
(4)		0
(0)		2
(3)		5
(14)		6
(10)		9
(14)		5
(12)		22
(41)
6rackspace.com80000 MB 150 GB $400
8611 / 55

2.861

0
(0)		6
(9)		0
(0)		5
(6)		9
(13)		6
(11)		12
(20)		8
(11)		40
(86)
5crystaltech.com200 MB 15 GB $7.95
400 MB 25 GB $16.95
1000 MB 100 GB $36.95
503 / 29

3.091

0
(0)		2
(2)		0
(0)		1
(3)		5
(8)		2
(3)		3
(4)		2
(3)		35
(59)
4lunarpages.com3000 MB 100 GB $7.95
4000 MB 200 GB $22.95
695 / 48

3.778

2
(3)		3
(7)		0
(0)		0
(0)		10
(18)		3
(8)		14
(20)		5
(13)		32
(86)
334sp.com50 MB 1 GB $2.20
100 MB 2 GB $3.67
200 MB 4 GB $6.60
500 MB 10 GB $17.51
471 / 28

4.24

0
(0)		1
(1)		0
(0)		0
(0)		1
(1)		3
(6)		3
(4)		3
(6)		36
(62)
2dreamhost.com4800 MB 120 GB $7.95
15360 MB 192 GB $31.95
27035 / 202

4.51

3
(4)		22
(44)		1
(1)		9
(11)		57
(75)		56
(90)		34
(57)		22
(41)		66
(142)
1directnic.com20 MB ^^ GB $0
20 MB 2 GB $1.25
460 / 32

6.542

0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		0
(0)		6
(8)		4
(5)		6
(11)		3
(4)		27
(52)


Conclusions

Any of the top 10 hosts are a good pick, but it would appear that the top 4 are the real cream.
If you intend to have a big site with lots of visitors, I would go for either Dreamhost.com or Lunarpages.com.
Otherwise 34sp.com and Directnic.com both do good offers for prices under 5 dollars.



More details on the process of filtering and selecting phrases

  • Phrase selection - The phrases selected were based mainly on how often people said them. This increases the reliability of the results. Example: "avoid host x" appears more often than "host x is a load of rubbish".
  • Intial filtering of hosts - Hundreds of hosts were initially checked to see if they appeared in Alexa's top 150,000 web sites. Around of half of these made the 'short list' of the 63 as presented above. Hosts which offered other services (such as domain registration or email) were also excluded, especially if that was their main service.
  • Google's nested entries: - Nested entries aren't counted so as to avoid results from the same site (mostly to avoid duplicates).
  • Duplication: "fortunecity is * great" is a good example of duplicates from Google. Out of the 180 listed, only 10 aren't dupes! I specially developed to remove all of these duplicates.
  • Name ambiguity: Special care had to be taken for hosts with names such as 'Tripod', as the same word can be used to represent something to rest a camcorder on, the name of a rock group, and is also the name of a comedian! In such cases, results were manually checked (tedious to say the least).
  • Filtering out of negative comments: - It was much easier filtering out negative comments from the results than positive. The reason for this is because people may recommend a host for commision/affiliate purposes rather than because they genuinely think the host in question is particularly good. Host reviewing sites will tend to do this a lot, and it's easy to see how bias can creep in - thus losing the objectivity of the results.
  • Google's unpredictibilty: - Problems arose when the EXACT same search resulted in far fewer results sometimes than other times. For example, a search for "tripod is great" can reveal either "1 - 87 of about 188" ...or... "1 - 100 of about 577", depending on what mood Google is in (or more technically, what data center Google fetches the search results from). Because of this, I always double and triple checked the results at various times, and used the larger number of results as the final data collection for my analysis. You'll see I've marked the 'total results' next to each rating in the table so you can verify them for yourself.
  • Sarcasm: - Positive comments can actually really be sarcastic towards that host. I tend to find this the case particuarly with the free hosts ;-) Example: "gotta love Geocities".
  • Service ambiguity: - Certain sites such as godaddy.com and pair.com were excluded from the results because they offer other services on top of hosting.
  • 'Recommend' search term - Rather than search for "recommend hostx" as is implied above, I used: "recommend hostx" -"not recommend hostx" -"wouldn't recommend hostx" -"don't recommend hostx" -"won't recommend hostx" -"no longer recommend hostx" -"cannot recommend hostx" -"we highly recommend hostx" -"we recommend hostx"


    External links:

  • http://www.webhostingratings.com/
  • www.hostingchecker.com
  • http://www.webhostmagazine.com/sc/index.asp
  • http://www.webhostmagazine.com
  • http://www.webhostmagazine.com/wf/
  • www.hosting-comparison.com/
  • www.whChart.com
  • www.hostreviewindex.com
  • www.awardwinninghosts.com
  • www.webhosting20.com
  • www.whChart.com
  • www.PerfectFitHosting.com
  • www.CyberNoggin.com
  • www.hosting-comparison.com/
  • www.webhostingpit.com
  • www.upperhost.com
  • http://www.hostingconsumerreport.org/
  • 2createawebsite.com - Lists disadvantages of free web hosts.
  • http://www.findmyhosting.com
  • http://www.webhostingunleashed.com
  • http://www.webhostingjury.com/
  • http://www.free-webhosts.com/reviews/
  • www.webhostmagazine.com - How to Find Your First Web Host (For Beginners)


    All pictures and text on this page are copyright 2005 onwards Daniel White.
    If you wish to duplicate any of the information from this page, you must contact me for permission.