Information on how we research and identify the best web hosting companies

This page defines the 11 factors we use to qualify the web hosting providers we recommend as being the best in the industry.

These are the categories we use to select our hosts, plus a respective highlight from the full qualification review listed below.

Direct Contact and Insider Information with Industry experts
Our experience includes working personally with over 2,000 web masters with multiple web hosting accounts.

Statistics
This information provides us with insider information regarding which web hosts are doing well & which are not.

Spot checking
When a company says that they are staffed & available for you 24/7 then you should be able to reach a support representative at 3am.

Internal System Testing
Acted as Secret Shoppers by testing over 150 live and demonstration control panel systems from a large variety of web hosting providers.

Solid Corporate Structure and Experienced Management
We make sure that we are representing web hosting providers which are in no way positioned to have catastrophic business interruption or complete failure.

Industry Leaders
Each web hosting provider which we consider representing must have an established track record and a respectable volume of customer accounts. Also each provider must be a profitable company.

Hardware and Systems
Is the web hosting company you will be hosting with, using the Best of Breed technologies available?

Communication Infrastructure in Support of Clients
Communication infrastructure to ensure that every call & every email are resolved in a timely manner.

Reliable Uptime
We utilize an independent 3 rd party system to monitor the uptime percentages of our referral hosts to ensure that they are delivering what they promise .

System Administration
All of the providers we recommend through this site have top notch system administration teams.

Web Hosting Forum Groups and User Reviews
We have sifted through tens of thousands of forum posts and what we have found is…

Direct Contact and Insider Information with Industry experts

For the past 5 years we have been working extensively in the web hosting and the web site development industries. Our experience includes working personally with over 2,000 web masters with multiple web hosting accounts. Our top agent, Charlie White, worked for one of the largest web hosting providers in the world in their marketing and special programs department. During that time he met the top web hosting industry insiders and kept his finger on the pulse of the web hosting industry. Charlie is considered by many to be one of the leading experts in today's web hosting industry and Charlie is the Director of our SafeGuard Support Initiative. This extensive web hosting industry contact has provided our team with terrific insight for which companies were doing well & which companies were not; as well as which are the best web hosting providers.

Statistics

Statistics present unbiased information. At BestWebHosting2007.com we utilize several resources to receive information on how many new accounts are signed up and how many accounts are lost for every web hosting provider. This way we get to see how well they are growing, how well they are retaining their customers' business and also the net gain or loss for each web host in any given week. This information provides us with insider information regarding which web hosts are doing well & which are not.

Spot Checking

Our belief is that when a company says that they are staffed & available for you 24/7 then you should be able to reach a support representative at 3am in the morning, or on Holidays, on weekends or even during the SuperBowl. We make hundreds of phone calls a month to spot check all of the web hosting providers we investigate to make sure that the ones we represent, or the ones we are considering for possible future representation, are following through on the commitments they make to their clients.

Internal System Testing

Our associates have acted as Secret Shoppers by testing over 150 live and demonstration control panel systems from a large variety of web hosting providers . We tested for functionality, system integrity, clearly understandable walk through instructions & ease of use for our novice to expert referral clientele.

Solid Corporate Structure and Experienced Management

There are literally over 10,000 web hosting companies listed on the internet and hundreds emerge or drop out of business every month. Some of our main contributing factors for deciding which web hosting providers to recommend are qualifiable integrity & solid internal structure. We make sure that we are representing web hosting providers which are in no way positioned to have catastrophic business interruption or complete failure. The Web Hosting providers we represent must have a minimum of 2 + years of an established positive track record in the industry. Each company must have adequate staffing with a manageable ratio of staff to web hosting members and their staffing must increase proportional to their customer growth. Additionally these companies must be able to show that they have training protocols for new employees and that they must have adequate personnel in most, if not all, of the following departments:

Technical Support
IT/Development
Domain/Domain Transfer
System Administration
Quality Assurance
Billing
Accounting
Sales
Human Resources

The leadership of these companies also had to have strong management at the highest levels with a clear vision of their service commitment to their clients.

Industry Leaders

Each web hosting provider which we consider representing, must have an established track record and a respectable volume of customer accounts. Also each provider must be a profitable company. We have seen far too many web hosting companies go out of business leaving their clients intellectual property in turmoil and with very little hope of any recovery on their web hosting investments. We are not looking for, nor will we automatically select the largest providers in the industry to represent. We look at the total number of clients a web hosting provider has, in conjunction with the providers' weekly net gain/loss information and combine that with our other deciding factors to firmly establish credibility as to the success of our referral web hosting companies.

Hardware and Systems

There are no web hosting companies in the marketplace which build their own servers from scratch or who lay their own bandwidth, so this category is relatively easy to judge as to which providers are doing a good job & which are not. Is the web hosting company you will be hosting with, using the Best of Breed technologies available? And as the web hosting provider utilizes 3 rd party software, are they updating their systems when updates need to occur? We make sure that our web hosting referral companies are reinvesting in their hardware & software infrastructure to ensure the best possible service for their customers.

Communication Infrastructure in Support of Clients

Not only must the hosting providers have service representatives available to address customer issues, but they must also have a communication infrastructure to ensure that every call & every email are resolved in a timely manner. Many times the initial email response by a web hosting company to a customer request may need further follow up. The top web hosting providers have invested in customer tracking systems to ensure that each & every client issue recorded, tracked and followed up to it's final resolution.

Reliable Uptime

Many times we are providing web hosting referrals to businesses, professionals and other corporate entities which need to be certain that their web sites are available for customers, clients and important visitors. Many web hosting companies will market themselves as having a 99.9% uptime guarantee but those guarantees are not always met. We utilize two independent 3rd party system to monitor the uptime percentages of our referral hosts to ensure that they are delivering what they promise:

Webhostratings.com & findyourhosting.com

System Administration

Unless you are hosting with a reseller of someone else's services, your web hosting provider will have their own System Administration team. The system administration team is an integral part of coordinating all of the services and hardware that the web hosting company will bundle together to ensure that your web hosting service runs well. This team is also the responders for system attacks or system failures that happen to every web host. Without a strong System Administration team your web hosting service will be more likely to have down time and as the web site manager, you will be more likely to experience aggravation with your web hosting provider. All of the providers we recommend through this site have top notch system administration teams.

Web Hosting Forum Groups and User Reviews

We take into account as many variables as possible when researching our web hosting choices. Most reviews of web hosting companies are negative, as there are very few people who as satisfied members of a particular web hosting provider will take the time to write a positive critique of that company. Persons who may feel that they were mistreated by a web hosting provider will more often look for a place to write a negative review of that host & describe their ordeals.

Fortunately, since almost all reviews are time stamped, this presents us with the opportunity to see if a web host takes the time to amend their ways. We have sifted through tens of thousands of forum posts and what we have found is if negative situations recur again and again over long periods of time we can conclude that those issues are not priorities for the web host, even if they are priorities for their members. On the other hand if a provider receives a negative review of a serious situation which occurs once or twice in a short period of time but then is never mentioned again in any other reviews, we can make a reasonable assumption that the provider took the issue seriously enough to address the problem & fix it.

If you would like us to send you a list of web hosting forums to visit to read about user reviews please send us an email at info@bestwebhosting2007.com with the subject line: Please send me a list of web hosting forums.

Thanks,
Marge & the Best Web Hosting Webmaster team!

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