Review sites exposed

Digitalfaq.com – Hypocrite – Claims of what makes a great host Part 1

Digitalfaq.com finds its way here because of an email I got from someone who did not know better but thought Digitalfaq.com was a great resource.  The person who emailed me thought I might want to reference digitalfaq.com as an unbiased source.  The page on Digitalfaq.com I am referring to claims to be against “affiliate splogs (spam blogs/sites)“.  Going further to claim,

These splogger sites simply list the companies that pay the best commissions, and the top site is always the one with the highest payout.“.

Digtalfaq.com has its own top lists.  The idea that a snake oil salesman would warn you against other snake oil salesmen should not surprise anyone.  There is no honor among thieves. Just don’t look at who is behind the curtain.  It is no surprise, but I see several hosts with an affiliate program.  I noticed while clicking on those hosts that I am getting affiliate cookies.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/web-hosting/4432-top-hosts-2013-a.html

Once again (because apparently, a few hundred times may still not be enough), I am not against making money or affiliate programs.  But I am against what Digitalfaq.com is attempting to do.

I have often been called a hypocrite because I have ads on this site.  How does having ads on my site make me the same as someone who gets a payout for hosting commissions?  They create false claims about hosts they showcase on their top lists, giving out “awards” or unverified reviews.  All for the sake of a payout.  Also, the payout for review sites is not always focused on high payments.  Some companies like Alreadyhosting.com, hostingsthatsuck.com, and hosting-review.com have ways of profiting off the low.  Hostingsthatsuck.com promoted a host that pays out less than $5 per sign-up (zyma.com). 

Google is the one picking out the ads for this site, which is not always hosting ads. I don’t endorse the ads on this site (i.e., making false claims about some company being too good to be true).   I certainly do not get the payouts that a web hosting sale would make, even if it was $5.  Digitalfaq.com is engaging in the hypocrisy that I have often been accused of.  On the other hand, I don’t mind anyone being suspicious of me having a personal agenda.  I would hope people can come away with some skepticism, take a deeper look, and entertain the idea that maybe the people I cover have their own agenda.  If you’re not open to exploring the possibilities of what I am trying to disclose, read no further.  Feel free to contact me if I am proven wrong.

I honestly would not have a problem with Digitalfaq.com doing their recommended hosts if they validated their recommendations with facts and disclosed that they make money if you sign up with a host they recommend.  Instead, when I first reviewed it, there was no disclaimer; now, there is one at the bottom of their long-winded, data-free sales pitch: “Trust me, just buy from these guys”.  I suspect digitalfaq.com has been called out by others who saw “hostname here”/affiliate/(affiliate id) when their browser was redirecting to one of digitalfaq.com’s recommended hosts.  

Never mind how much Digitalfaq.com says they have been with Eurovps.com, their domain WHOis information suggests Digitalfaq.com last changed something back on November 14, 2012.  Since Digitalfaq.com loves Eurovps.com so much, why do Hostgator.com and other companies get a far bigger banner?  A bigger banner means a better chance of the ad being clicked on.  From the ads I have been seeing, I suspect they are all affiliate programs.

Over the next few days, I will post a dissection of what Digitalfaq.com is doing, how they are like most hosting review sites, and how they differ.

Webhostingreviewz.com gets an open answer to their partnership request

This week I received a request with a hosting review site called webhostingreviewz.com, this is my letter to someone calling himself Alex.

In short Hosting-reviews-exposed.com is not going to partner with webhostingreviewz.com

Looking at the first 19 hosts on your blog (webhostingreviewz.com is powered by WordPress), there is a pretty clear reason why these hosts have your attention.

Company / Commission per sign up

Inmotionhosting.com $50 – 100
webhostinghub.com

$100

iPage.com

$105

Justhost.com

$60

UK2.net 35% – 60%
Fatcow.com

$100

Codero.com $100 – 200
Superb.net 10% – 120%
Eleven2.com

$75

Greengeeks.com $50 – 100
Netfirms.com

$60

Networksolutions.com 30% or $150
1and1.com up to $300
webhostingworld.net

25%

register.com Up to $750
midiphase.com

$100

anhosting.com

$100

reliacloud.com

$25

webhostingpad.com

$75

 

Once again I don’t have a problem with Webhostingreviewz.com or other sites making money, but I have a problem with the methodology of webhostingreviewz.com and a clear lack of ethics.

So why would webhostingreviewz.com want to partner with hosting-reviews-exposed.com?

Despite my lack of work on this site (after all I do this in my free time), it has a some pretty good traffic stats in regards to many terms used in hosting, as well top spots on many top big and small hosts with search engines. It’s why many hosts have contacted me for a review, and just like webhostingreviewz.com they do not bother to see what this site is about.

In short hosting-reviews-exposed.com is about exposing sites like webhostingreviewz.com that promote hosts for the sake of a payout.

I am not sure why you have not read my blog, as clearly it would indicate that you should try to steer clear. The review site (webhostingreviewz.com) that you presented to me for partnership goes against everything that hosting-reviews-exposed.com stands for. Webhostingreviewz.com even proves my point that people with your mind set will do anything to make a buck even if it is unethical.  For which I refer to your latest tweet.

webhostingreviewz.com –  Unnatural growth

Hosting-reviews-expoosed.com is not my first site, so I am familiar with how sites grow. There are a lot of things that do not seem right with webhostingreviewz.com. Totaling all of your ratings together you have at last count 56.  54 positive and 2 negative. I have gone through the first 5 pages and the last 5 pages of your site and it seems that the reviews are limited to the first 4 pages. Nor does it seem that your site is entirely dedicated to hosting reviews, but also to reviews of web sites scripts (which in turn also have affiliate programs).The last comment appears to be around August 2011. Due to the way you have posts set up on your blog I am not sure when the latest post is, as it seems you have posts in order of most comments which would be inmotionhosting.com.  I see you have a post on Hosthttp, I first found out about them February 2011 (https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=1940), which I find funny the only thing negative you can say about them is they do not have background information on their site. They probable have limited details because they just started just weeks before they got on  Webhostignstuff.com’s top 25 list. Since I first looked at your site, your Alexa score has dropped by 40,000. It was around 520,000 when I first looked. For so few negative reviews, I find it odd that your score is this low and dropping. But that might be explained away since I know services that I know that can drop your score down to 100,000 for $40 a month. I can assure if Google and other search engines find out you have done this they will remove you from their search engines. I for sure will report you if I find any of what I believe are true.

What I think was fabricated and regurgitated at webhostingreviewz.com

I find it amazing that less than 100 reviews webhostingreviewz.com has significant numbers in social media. But like Alexa there is a work around.

Twitter, I think your first tweet for webhostingreviewz.com explains where all of your Twitter followers came from.  One method I know of is where you have software that picks out other people that automatically follow other people.  You can also of coarse buy followers on twitter.

Also I don’t think it helps your seo to spam your jewlery site on your hosting review twitter account.

Facebook, I find it hard to believe that you have 3,300 followers. Seriously you have less than a 100 reviews on webhostingreviewz.com. Which last I checked you can  find people on Fiverr.com that will get you 600 followers at $5.

A lot of your content looks like it was regurgitated and respun material that comes from the hosts. I can’t count the number of ways you have stated in one way or another that how a host made 99.9% uptime their core mission.  Yet your claims of a host being good lack any credible proof of use. Perhaps you used webhostingpad.com, as only two negative reviews as enough to justify banning them, even though you seem to think it was ok to still post coupon codes for their site. The grammar makes my pre morning coffee iPad post look flawless.  Normally I am not one to point out grammar, but the wording for many of these are not even like me making mistakes of using then when I should have used than.

Your video looks like it was done by someone on Fiverr.com.  After all look at the little white bar on the bottom of the video, a lack of a company logo. If this was done in house it would not have been hard to remove the white line on the bottom and add a company logo.

webhostingreviewz.com lacks FTC compliance.

Last year Hostgator.com, Endurance International Group (comprising hosts like fatcow, ipage, justhost, bluehost, and 40 or more hosts),  inmotionhosting.com, and many other hosts sent out a compliance email. In hostgator.com’s case they require that you have disclosure right next to any endorsement that you get paid for referrals.  There are a few review sites such as yours, and I am hoping to put more effort into that at the end of the year

webhostingreviewz.com is a polar opposite to hosting-reviews-exposed.com. Which is why this site will not partner with a so called review site like webhostingreviewz.com.

Ratepoint.com – Out of Business

Ratepoint.com was a point of interest for me because I found it on many hosts that paid for spots in webhostingstuff.com’s top 25 list. As of earlier last Month they officially closed their doors in a rather perplexing manner.  Their technologies were sold, but not their customer base. Something clearly went wrong. I knew about this early January and I thought it was a bit odd as the main page had not changed.

I meant to do this post before the end of January, but I was waiting on brainhost.com to actually answer my questions on my previous  post, I wanted to make sure that the time I would spend on this blog would be dedicated to their response.  Surprise, but I never got a response beyond the first two.  Between issues of estate, house hunting, and work load I had all but forgotten about this site.  It took being called a grumpy blogger by one of the sites I watch (check the previous post).   Time really flies by when you don’t pay attention.

The other problem I had with ratepoint.com was what I considered a conflict of interest.  After all what incentive does a company have to keep an account open with a large percentage of negative feedback?  If a company gets too much negative feedback the natural inclination would be to cancel the service.  I mean who would pay a company to house their negative feedback right?

I have heard from both ratepoint.com, the hosts that use them, and customers of the hosts.

Ratepoint.com gave me a mixed message. By phone they told me I would be able to delete the negative feedback.  But their email contradicted that and said I would have to go through a series of steps.

Hosts that have used them have told me that the customer has to agree to delete the negative  feedback.  In other words those steps that were mentioned in the email. All of the hosts I have talked to also agree that there was room for abuse.  By which I mean lots of fake positive feedback. Which a host would be willing to pay for.

Customers of some of these hosts that used ratepoint.com claimed that their negative reviews were deleted.   While some hosts that I have been in communication tell me that it does not work that way, and in some cases the negative feedback is irreversible if not dealt with in a certain amount of time.

That is any company not just hosts could pay them to host the reviews.

Interestingly enough when I started nosing around for people that were having their negative feed back deleted, someone at ratepoint.com put their email on my mailing list.  I suppose I will get to see if they are still accepting email next mail out I do.

I am a little baffled by the closing.  The technologies part of the company was sold, but the customer base was abandoned. Something is not right here, especially when people are being referred to another company.  They were not handed off to another company. I can only speculate that they were not running with a profit. Why not a gradual price increase? One thing I found prior to them shutting the site down was an address that creditors were suppose to contact. I can’t seem to find where I put the screen shot for this address and if I find it later I will post it.  But the address pointed to some limonene company.

Here is the Message Ratepoint.com sent to their customers.

Important Message Regarding Discontinuation of RatePoint Services

RatePoint customers, partners, and friends:

As some of you may know, RatePoint’s assets and technologies are currently being acquired. Unfortunately this means that all RatePoint accounts will soon be closed. Effective February 2, 2012, all RatePoint services, including Reputation Management, Email Marketing, Surveys, and Product Reviews will be discontinued. Your ability to access your RatePoint account will end at this time.

However, we are happy to suggest a viable alternative to RatePoint. For customers that want to continue using a good reputation management platform, we highly recommend Customer Lobby. We’ve arranged for them to waive the activation fee, provide discounted rates, and import existing reviews for any RatePoint user! Please read this article (http://help.ratepoint.com/entries/20892482), call 866-718-9549, or contact ratepointtransfer@customerlobby.com for more info.

We recommend removing all RatePoint widgets, buttons, seals, and signup boxes from your website as soon as possible, along with any links to any ratepoint.com sites. If you have any data you’d like to retrieve from your RatePoint account — such as contacts, business reviews, or product reviews — you should do that on or before the morning of February 2 at the very latest. After that time, you will be unable to retrieve your information.

For more information, feel free to email support@ratepoint.com or see the help articles below:

How do I export my contacts? (http://help.ratepoint.com/entries/20813106)

How do I export my Business Reviews? (http://help.ratepoint.com/entries/20813181)

How do I export my Product Reviews? (http://help.ratepoint.com/entries/20827157)

I’m a RatePoint partner. How does this effect me? (http://help.ratepoint.com/entries/20813831)

I prepaid annually for RatePoint; what do I do? (http://help.ratepoint.com/entries/20834948)

Thanks for your support; we wish you all the best.

Sincerely

RatePoint, Inc.

Less than a month later Ratepoint.com would be taken off line.  Sometime after I get a house I will have to re-reviews the hosts that I found using ratepoint.

Hostingsthatsuck.com versus Benjamin the Grumpy Blogger

On Sunday Hostingsthatsuck.com decided to retract their approval of Zyma.com.

http://www.hostingsthatsuck.com/zyma-sucks/

The original post is gone, though I still have a screen shot. I suspect like several other people that choose to promote this host, hostingsthatsuck.com  had their free hosting account closed down last month.  Now that the gravy train is over, the happy thoughts go away.  Because despite the negative reviews that came in October 2011, Hostingsthatsuck.com did not disclose this email then.

An email from Zyma.com to Hostingsthatsuck.com

On October 4th one of the servers (panda) in our network experienced a serious software fault, which consequently lead to an outage lasting a total of 10 days. Our engineers have been working hard to resolve the problem, and we are now pleased to say that issue has now been permanently resolved and that no data loss has occurred. We acknowledge the fact that no information was sent to our customers and we deeply apologize for the lack of information and updates sent to the affected customers regarding this matter.”

Compensation:
We understand that customers experiencing this problem felt alot of anger as they were unable to reach our tech support team during the downtime period. To show our commitment to constantly improving our service, we are now offering all affected customers 2 months of free hosting credit being added directly to their account. To redeem the free credit, simply send a quick email to support@zyma.com and the domain name that was affected during the downtime period, and we will add the extra credit.

Despite the rumours, the company is in excellent financial standing, and we are no way in risk of any kind of bankruptcy. All customer hosting accounts are 100% safe for the duration of their purchase. We are here for the long run and are constantly striving to improving our services. We don’t overload or oversell the number of hosting accounts on any one of our servers.

Once again we sincerely apologize for all the inconvenience and problems caused by this issue and we would like to re-assure all our customers, that this issue has been permanently been resolved, and will NOT re-occur now or in the future.

Thank you for your co-operation and patience in this matter.

Regards,

Support Team
Zyma Technologies

In short Khuram lied to me about deleting hostingsthatsuck.com hosting account and affiliate program. He stated the following on my first post:

Khuram / January 26, 2011

Quite frankly, we were completely unaware that hostingsthatsuck.com were being dishonest in their review. We believe that people should write accurate and honest reviews about hosting companies, whether it is good or bad, which is why we have revoked hostingsthatsuck.com affiliate license with us, as well as removed their website from our servers.

If that is true, why did hostingsthatsuck.com get the above email?

It really did not bother me so much that Khuram lied to me, I pretty much figured he did since until this Sunday there was an endorsement page for zyma.com on hostingsthatsuck.com. What bothered me was the lack of disclosure on Hostingsthatsuck.com’s part until February 2012. They did it for what amounts to peanuts in affiliate fees.  After all how much can you squeeze out of  less than $10 a year payment? Unlike your so called top 10 sites, hostingsthatsuck.com can promote anyone that contacts them.  After all that is what Zyma.com did, they sent me the same exact invite that they sent hostingsthatsuck.com.

So things went sour between Hostingsthatsuck.com and Zyma.com

Instead of owning up to their mistakes they decided to throw an insult my way, without referring who “a grumpy blogger named Benjamin” was, that would be me.

As mentioned by a grumpy blogger named Benjamin on another website, Zyma hosting is a relatively new and just a small company as compared to other players like Godaddy or 1and1. Benjamin believes that this website should not give recommendation to a new host and we should let the big companies have it all. We disagree with this reasoning for not recommending a company, and we still believe that being a smaller company also means a hosting company may be able to take better care of their customers. So to any angry blogger who believes our method is totally flawed, we suggest you stick with your big companies like 1and1 and we wish you good luck.

I love how they call me out by name, but they failed to reference this site or the two posts about Zyma.com. Yet I am a grumpy person? I am pretty sure I was fully caffeinated when I wrote every post dealing with them. With no lack of coffee I have no reason to be grumpy. Honestly I like to think I approach topics like this with some level of satire. But the two posts I wrote about zyma.com seem dry in regards to any form of emotion. But what else can Hostingsthatsuck.com do when I am writing counter posts, surely the use of actual facts is not the best way to counter my posts. Like explain to me where it is I said I don’t think new hosts should get a recommendation.

Perhaps Hostingsthatsuck.com are Grumpy Bloggers? After all they had a 10 day outage and probable lost their free hosting account last month.

What did hostingsthatsuck.com leave out?

As stated they left out that this was a new company back in 2011. But there were a lot of other things they didn’t do.  Like tell you what domain they have hosted with them. How much resources they were using.  Instead of giving real data, they gave cropped screen shots that gave little detail and general information that could pretty much cover any hosting company.

Post from last year when Zyma was trolling for exposure:

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=1618

Post from this year to see where they were now:

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2945

If I am supposed to avoid the new hosts, than hostingsthatsuck.com are supposed to avoid the old hosts? Frankly they don’t get the say on who I do a review on, just as much as I don’t get a say on who they try to peddle on anyone that comes to their site. This was not a matter of if this host was new or old, small or big. It’s a matter of ethics.  The author for Hostingsthatsuck.com that wrote the Zyma.com post choose to completely ignores the fact that would not help result in a sale, and that was the fact that this host was new. They choose not to disclose til now that they received an email about the down time in October 2011.  So seriously why did it take this long to share an email from October 2011?

So is Hostingsthatsuck.com right about me thinking new companies should not be endorsed?

New companies have a big challenge of bringing in customers than say a company that can afford to run commercials during the Super Bowl (i.e. Hostgator) or run full page ads in Popular Mechanics (i.e. 1 & 1). Hostingsthatsuck.com used the trick of telling you to search for “Zyma sucks”, and yeah there were none out there at the time. Other than other people trying to pull the same tricks as hostingsthatsuck.com.   Hostingsthatsuck.com makes it a point to be in the top of search results for “(host name here) sucks”. Not so much to provide details about a company sucking, but to get buyers to sign up with the company for what may be peanuts like Zyma.com or big pay like Hostgator.com.

I make it an effort with any review of a new host to point out that if they are new, that should not be criteria to use against the company. New companies stand to lose more than older and bigger competitors with the loss of a single customer. Meaning they have more reason to work on keeping a customer. Not to mention there are large old companies like Burst.net that I advise avoiding like the plague. This had to deal with disclosing details like they had been contacted by zyma.com to do a review, and that they were new.

Back when I made my top 10 list for finding a host, I made my feeling clear on new hosts July 10, 2011:

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2351

On a side note a new company is not a bad thing; we all have to start somewhere. This is why I recommend that on the initial sign up that you do no more than 30 days the first time around, and sign up for more time later on. Also a new company may be more eager to work to keep your business, where as a large establishment may consider you more of a number.

The whole searching for bad things about Zyma.com was flawed because there was nothing negative out due to the fact it was a new host. Lack of (Zyma.com sucks) does not mean that the host was good, nor does it mean they are bad.

But even when this “(host name) sucks” is used on old / big hosts hostingsthatsuck.com sales pitch ignores actual facts. There has not been a host yet that they have recommended where I was able to find more negative comments using the same criteria “(host name) sucks)” just going over the first few pages I can find more negative posts than what they say there are. Never mind their claim includes all search results. They want you to look no further, I want you to look beyond what they say.

I want to make it clear again:

I do not have a problem with Hostingsthatsuck.com making money off affiliate programs.

I do not have a problem with Hostingsthatsuck.com referring people to new hosts.

I do however have a problem with hostingsthatsuck using junk logic to make a buck, especially when they ignore the facts.

thebest10webhosting.com your lesson begins here

Going through my pending and spam comments I found thebest10webhosting.com. I was in the middle of doing some long overdue maintenance. So I figured I would try and check and make sure there was nothing valid in the spam folder.  When a comment came in from this so called review site. At the same time I am trying to answer everyone’s email/comments. Some of which I have trouble answering and/or approving because in some cases like this they choose to do commenting that did not add to the discussion, but rather to their own benefit even it has nothing to do with the topic. This is the first of a few posts I want to do to explain what I deem as inappropriate. In this case web sites trying to advertise their services at my expense.

I will shortly explain why I choose thebest10webhosting.com to be my example.

There is nothing special about thebest10webhosting.com.

thebest10webhosting.com has an Alexa Score of: 5,859,871

Hostingreviews.exposed.com has an Alexa Score of 165,972 (before my server issues I was below 140,000)

Remember when it comes to an Alexa score you want a low number.

Some example of companies with low Alexa scores

Facebook – 2

Amazon.com – 12

Hostgator.com – 245

Bluehost.com – 393

Fatcow.com – 3,095

This high a number generally means visitors are rare. Despite having more Facebook fans then me, they have far less feedback then I would expect from a site with so many Followers on Facebook.  You would think on average they would have more reviews then Facebook fans.

As for being a site with years of experience:

Creation Date: 06-aug-2011

They have not even been online for a year, but from what archive.org shows they did start the site the same month they bought the domain.

http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/thebest10webhosting.com

So why am I even bothering going after thebest10webhosting.com?

In terms of a post that will bring me in traffic this is not one of them. It may very well go down to be my least viewed post. In general I don’t bother with hosts that have an Alexa score above 1,000,000 after having dealt with the hosts that purchased fake positions at webhostingstuff.com. I only did that because I wanted to prove that these hosts were paying for a position in the top 25. For review sites I don’t bother with them unless they are below 500,000. That does not mean just because your Alexa score was too high that I completely forgot about them. For some that I have potential I have on a list for re-review at a later date.

But as I stated I wanted to work on a post that deals with comments; in this case hosts, sites that sell services to websites (Like Mindshark.ca), and review sites that choose to spam in one form or another.

This review site that had the unlucky timing to spam my blog Tuesday is thebest10webhosting.com .

Which happens to come in at a time when I need an example of  what happens when you spam me. At the same time it serves as one of many so called consumer watch dogs or in other words top 10 sites. Though I guess you could have figured that out by the long domain name.

This so called review site tried to chime in on a post I made about inmotion, it did not really add anything to conversation. But they defiantly tried to get their link in there. After all how best to get a big payout then to go to a site that has a post about one of the companies that they are trying to convince people is a good company. Because of this review site I decided to review webhostinghub.com and inmotionhosting.com to see if they had an FTC compliance clause in their Affiliate Agreement.  Turns out every one of the hosts on this top 10 list do.

This post is pretty much to point out why companies should not bother doing fake comments on my site or spam me to promote their own company.  I will make it a point to make my own traffic from their name. Just as I will do with any company that tries to spam me be in via email, YouTube, comments on this blog, or whatever else. Which means I will look for every flaw that I can find about their site.

Another problem is if people look up your site through an internet search they will find my site. So instead of making traffic off my work, I make traffic off thier work.

If any individual needs more of a reason not to spam me or anyone else they need look no further then this list of companies that I can think off the top of my head that spammed me in one form or another. This site appears on the first page of many of their search engine results:

Mindshark.ca https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2037

UnlimitedGB.com https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=1240

Manashosting.com https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=1040

So here are the flaws with thebest10webhosting.com

They are another of these so called top 10 sites, who allow comments/reviews (maybe).  I have a very good reason for believing that their reviews are fake.  After all how can a site get a review before they were up? Remember the creation date for their domain is August 6, 2011, yet this review as done July 23, 2011.


 

On top of that most of the comments are between September and October 2011 in no particular random order.

So which of the top 10 hosts that appears on the list does thebest10webhosting.com host with?

NONE OF THEM

That’s right, not a single one of these hosts.  They host with Godaddy. Honestly compared to many of the hosts that appear on list I can tell you why. While Godaddy does have an affiliate program it does not payout near as much for the same package as most of these companies.

The interesting thing is thebest10webhosting.com has not gotten the memo that HostClear.com is merging with JustHost.com.

Is thebest10webhosting.com FTC compliant?

Well they do have a disclaimer, which I copied and pasted below.  Please keep in mind that text in italics and red is not my grammar or spelling.  Clearly doing very little to state they get paid by this top 10 list, but they do in great length say they are not liable.

http://thebest10webhosting.com/disclaimer.php

In the interest of the consumer and according to FTC requirements we openly disclose that all the information on this website TheBest10WebHosting.com is for information purposes only. Not trying to provide advise of any kind. Saying that, you as user of this site, should not rely completely on the information found here to provide advise. It is also important to disclose that we receive payments from advertising other companies in this website. 

The scoring system used in this website is at the discretion of the webmaster, as well as the statements, reviews and recommendations. The user must be aware that some reviews could be falsely submitter with exagerated or incorrect statments. We do our best to keep all the information from our advertisers up to date, but we do not provide any warranty of the accuracy of the information provided in this website. It is also necesary to clarify that we are not a web hosting company, we do not own nor are we owned or managed by a hosting company.

Neither TheBest10WebHosting.com, its owners, subsidiaries, affiliates, and employees, nor any person associated with the creation and maintenance of this website shall be responsible or liable in any manner or to any extent for any direct, indirect, special, third party or consequential damages, losses or expenses arising out of the use of this website. We will not be responsible for any detrimental reliance that you may place upon the site or its contents.

You hereby agree and acknowledge that TheBest10WebHosting.com and its affiliates shall not be responsible for any damages you may suffer as a result of the transmission of confidential or sensitive information over the Internet, and that all such communications will be at your own risk.

While thebest10webhosting.com has a page stating that they get paid (very short)  this violates many of the hosts FTC compliance measures.

1. You have to scroll down and click to find and read the disclosure.

2. Its not on the same pages as the endorsements.

3. Its not clear that thebest10webhosting.com is being paid by these “top” hosts.

So that means I will be contacting every Endurance International Group host, Hostgator.com, and other hosting groups that appear on this top 10 to advise them that their affiliate is non-compliant.

 

I will update this post with the responses I get from the following hosts:

Inmotionhosting.com

Webhostinghub.com

Justhost.com

iPage.com

Hostgator.com

Fatcow.com

SuperGreen.com

Bluehost.com

HostMonster.com

JustHost.com

Hopefully I do not add too much traffic to thebest10webhosting.

4 years and counting, reviewing hosting review sites

I can honestly say when I first started in the hosting industry I never thought about doing anything with hosting review sites. But not everyone who shared control of the hosting sites with me, was not thinking of how to monopolizing on hosting review sites.  I had a business partner that wanted to start a fake review site, where our hosts would appear on top. An idea he got from Featureprice. There are other hosts that practice this today such as siteground. He did not have the conscience I have, one that can cause loss of sleep.  Despite winning the argument of staying out of the review industry, I lost the war to stay out of the cheap hosting industry.  That and several other factors would lead to me selling my controlling shares. Being  against starting a fake review site had caused a rift between me and my business partner for a few years.  Up to the point webhostingstuff.com decided to delete our positive feed back.   The rift quickly dissolved when he found I was making this site, and then he wanted to know what he could do to help me with it.

A short re-introduction of the history of reviewing hosting review sites

My start in the hosting industry was about 15 years ago, when I was introduced to the guy that would later be my business partner in the hosting industry. At that time I had been hired because I was pretty good with data bases, and later I would transition over to graphics.  At the time we both worked for a so called “I can make you rich if you buy my book” guy, or in short a guru.  Even before that my business partner had ideas of running a hosting company.  By the time we had gotten out of the “give me money so I can tell you how I got rich” industry we had partnered with someone else that would ultimately lock us out of our first hosting operation, this host would ultimately die 2 weeks after we were locked out.   Which set us back 8 months in getting another host started up.  Ultimately this host would take off and it still is active to this day.  Despite some other failed business relationships one with a tech who did not believe in virus protection.  Details given in one of my early posts.

By the time webhostignstuff.com came into the picture we had 2 hosts running, a third in production.  This was the point where they decided to delete the positive hosting review feedback of one of my companies.  My company was not the first, nor was it the last.  The big difference is those other hosts did not have someone like me.  I am not saying I am special, far from it. It’s the whole thinking outside the dimensions of a box and not just out of the box. Simple put I am really weird.

The reason webhostingstuff.com deleted my positive feed back was because they were using the negative hosting reviews for my site to encourage others to buy from their top 25, and the same for any host that was not paying for a spot in the top 25. After all its not profitable for people to come to their site and find out that people were happy with the service my company provided or the company they were looking into.   That and the less new customers that flow in from webhostingstuff.com to those that paid for top 1 – 25 positioning will be less likely to pay for a spot, or in the case of Michael Lows hosting review site hostaz.com, people would be less likely to sign up for the hosts that are set up with affiliate links.  Despite saying they don’t delete feed back, they do.  They even give reasons for deleting it such as you closed your account and got a refund.  Never mind the reasons for closing your account may very well justify you creating a hosting review.

Seeing (a) positive review(s) would not give the possible customer a reason to review the so called top 25 list. At the same time people who paid for the top 25 have had their negative hosting review(s) deleted.  Something I witnessed with Infinite Networks.   When I first reviewed them they had 6 reviews with a 2 out of 5 star rating.  Then they had 4 reviews so it was 3 out of 5 stars.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2117

This site started as a way to vent my anger in my scant free time.  After launching the one page site and the video, I contacted many of the hosts that appeared in these so called hosting review sites.  None of them responded back to me. By the end of December 2007 my anger had long cooled down, and I thought this site would go no where.

I of coarse debated on advertising my hosting company on the site, but it seemed like a conflict of interest.  In many ways I think this would work to my advantage as many smaller hosts would point people to my site.

Right before the 4th quarter of 2009 several factors lead to me deciding it was time to get out of the hosting business among them  was zero vacations/weekends and  long hours.  Not to mention I had wanted to finish up school for a career in biology.  I was not too thrilled dealing with a cheap hosting industry as the less a customer paid the more they expected.  They were more likely to put in support tickets.  On top of that others in our company infrastructure wanted to do what EIG (Endurance International Group) was doing (several hosting companies while using the control panel as a advertising platform), and already had two more companies planned for release in early 2010.

By the end I sold my shares for 60 – 70% of their value, in hopes of getting out as fast as possible (a decision I would regret later as that was a lot of money). I had to sign a non-disclosure agreements and non-compete clause (ncc) agreements.

In early 2010 after finalizing the sales Google contacted me to put AdSense on the site.  Also someone in Singapore was trying to buy the site off of me (Which so happens to be where Michael Low is from).

I thought it was a bit odd, here is a site that for two and half years I did nothing with, it was tied to two videos on YouTube.   One with no sound which is the most popular, and has people saying I should add sound.  Another with sound (thanks to a volunteer) that gets less traffic.  I approved or declined of comments and responded to them.  That was the most I did to maintain this site.  So why the heck did Google want me to put AdSense on it?

I decided to see what a search of Google would find.  The first was a blog for a host.  It pointed to my video and actually did a review of some of the hosts on this hosting review site that were on the top 25, one was hostdawgs.com (Which later went out of business).   They showed based on numbers that the system made no sense.  Hosts with a high amount of negative reviews or no reviews at all were on the list. They also had proof that webhostingstuff.com was deleting negative feed back. I also found that other hosts were referring people to my site such as this one.

This was the point I had decided that I need to start reviewing webhostingstuff.com on a regular basis to find their inconstancies.  I would also soon find out the site was losing traffic due to be on a shared environment with Godaddy and would soon move off to MediaTemple.

A summary of 1.5 years of looking at hosting review sites

One of the biggest inconstancies with this so called hosting review site, was a site called i7net.  The problem with i7net was it had not been online for months at a time.  Worse yet webhostingstuff.com stated that because of the frequency of downtime they were no longer keeping track of the up time   So on this wonderful top 25 you could see a very clear 0% for up time next to the zero stars for zero hosting reviews. Despite that it appeared off an on in the top 25 list from June – November 2010.  Until Webhostignstuff.com finale figured it out, and deleted the site’s listing from their data base.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=586

A better summation of the problems I found on this so called unbiased hosting review site can be found at:

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2121

As my reviews intensified I had to start asking friends around the globe to get me screen shots because I was being blocked.  Which in turned my friends started being blocked.  They probable would not have been blocked if I had not sent emails to Michael Low telling him what countries and ISP my friends were in. Seriously if his site was legit why block people?

By May 2011 Webhostingstuff.com went through a face lift making the top 25 list obscure.  As I had to tell a very angry Jixhost.com (who happen to argue with me on webhostingtalk.com) that it may not be profitable to have to pay for a position that is now 9 clicks away from the main page when it was only 1.  Plus risk the chance of  losing people who are blocked.  At which time I have stopped reviews.  Though I can say I am not done with webhostingstuff.com. Despite these changes the only PPC going on with their site is from Google.

Fun on Webhostingtalk.com

I also got exposed on webhostingtalk.com:

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2207

I learned about Endurance International Group

Its funny how a chat can tell you things you never knew.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=771

One of the big problems with this company is it does not fully disclose the list of hosts that are with them.  One of their former employees as you can see from the comments on that last post claimed that justhost.com was not added the BBB record (the only place I know that has a list of their sites) as it was a fairly new acquisition.  Which is not true as netfirms was acquired after that by atleast a year or 2, appeared just weeks after someone notified me that Netfirms had a been acquired.  I think had something to do with it being a Canadian host versus a U.S. host.  As EIG went out of its way to notify people and actually had a page dedicated to the transfer of the customers.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=1964

A few months ago they may have given me an edge with hosting review sites on FTC guide lines.  Which in short means if you profit by a review, you have to have a disclaimer up.  Which another site called hostingsthatsuck.com did not have until after I did a post on them.  I had planned on doing a review of every review site with an Alexa score below 1,000,000 that I came across based on these guidelines.  Time permitting I will start that process up again.

If you are a host, hosting review site, or anyone else I am the last person to spam.

I decided to take on certain elements in the hosting / web site industry.  The first of which was mindshark.ca.  A so called SEO company.  They harvested my email (they claim a third party did it, after I called their bluff on so called opting in), by going to my contact form and sending me an email.  I of coarse trying to not be rude responded.  Next thing I know I got spam.  Never mind the only purpose of that email was contacts from the contact form, blog updates, and YouTube. They claimed that I opted in, having been a previous hosting provider I know full well what opted in means.  In short I wrote two posts that stay at the top of their search engine results to prove they don’t know diddly squat about SEO, which says a lot as I don’t know a lot about SEO.  Did I mention my two posts appear in the top page of mindshark.ca review for Google?

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2037
https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2055

Fake hosting review comments by Unlimitedgb.com

This is an on going drama, and one that I never thought would have gotten a lot of attention.  My former business partner thought it was a waste of time for me to do posts on hosts that spam unless they were like hostgator.  But a post on Unlimtedgb.com was the first host to get in trouble with me for posting fake positive reviews on my posts.  Seriously I am try to find the worst things about a host, and this host comes along to create fake feed back while bashing a host. Did they not think that maybe if I did not like fake reviews, I am really not going to like spam.  Not to mention its poor taste to try and make a buck off another hosts expense.

The worst of it was yet to come.  After I wrote a post:

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=1240

Which in turn they decided to post positive comments, big surprise as this is strategy they do on other sites to drown out negative feed back (in a few cases some of these commenters came from the same IP).  But the worst of it was this page appeared on the first page of their search engine results. So he tried to bribe me.  I had to see how much he would pay, so before I contacted him I stated on Twitter and Face Book that some host was trying to bribe me and that I was going to soon bust them for it.

Clearly he did not read my Social Media for this site.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2436

This is where he had the nerve to question my ethics for posting his email after not responding to the above post.  Never mind he spammed my blog, created fake feed back, and then tried to bribe me.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2461

Despite a third post they decided to start spamming fake comments again on my site. Despite calming they had stopped that.

Bottom line if your going to spam my site, be prepared for me to do a post so I can get traffic off your site.

Another hosting company that has my interest is Gogvo.com, after one of their affiliates decided to spam my personal YouTube account. Which brings me back to the point where I worked for a “give me money and I will tell you how I got rich” guy.  Frankly this is worse than most review sites.  It not even so much the promise of good hosting, as it is the promise of income.  Never mind half the so called gurus have a disclaimer that states that results are not typical (translation stay away).

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2679

Those are some the highlights over the past few years I thought were interesting.

A few answers to questions I get in regards to hosting-reviews-exposed.com

For those that wonder what hosts I ran.

The answer is I cannot say, granted even if I was not legally bound by a non-disclosure agreement I have no desire anyway.

For those that wonder if I will start new hosting company.

Despite having a little more than 3 years left in the non-compete agreement. I ultimately have no desire to get back into hosting.  Perhaps that will change in the future.  But I have no desire to get back into nickel and dime hosting.  No offence, but the cheap plans are fine to start out with, but they are not a viable long term solution for a serious site.  If I get back in it would only be with hosting solutions for those that want serious solutions.  Otherwise called overpriced hosting to those that think unlimited hosting is the key to success.  Even if I did I would not involve that company with this site.

My site is against hosting review sites making money / I hate affiliate programs?

I never stated that I hate affiliate programs.  I have at many points expressed concern over affiliate programs that pay out more than a customer that clicks on an affiliate link may pay for in a year.  I am concerned with quality of service / support.  When 100% or more of a customer’s payment goes to the affiliate, none of it goes to service.

With that said, this is not my only site.  Far from my only source of income (I would be living in a card board box, with a card board iPad).  All of my sites, including this one are involved in an affiliate program or a program like Google’s Adsense.  I am not telling people that they should not use affiliate programs or that making money of referring people to a host is a bad thing.  It’s a bad thing when a review site makes so called top lists based on how much they get paid.  That means they don’t have a hosting customers interests in mind with a false hosting review site.

The problem is I have yet to see a hosting review site that does not manipulate the system to make a gain.  Which is why I have turned away many hosts review sites that have asked for my endorsement.  Often by giving them email of what the post would look like.

Having ads on my site is hypocritical of since I am going after hosting review sites that make money?

This is an argument I don’t understand. I am not telling you what hosts to use (though books, music, video games, or electronics just ask I will refer you).   I don’t have some so called review site with hosts I have never used, telling you their the best while getting  secretly paid out for referals.  For that matter there is no host I am willing to put my name behind.  I admit I have tried some of the same writing  style of sites I find on the first page of “(host name) + sucks” on Google to formulate posts in the beginning.  Many of these affiliates were not even hosted with the hosts they recommend.  One example is webhostingstuff.com which as far as I have seen has never had softlayer.com on their top 25 list.

In short the argument does not focus on the real issue.  Even if I had affiliate ads for hosts every where and made large commissions on referrals I would not be doing the same thing they are, and that is telling you a host is the best.

For over 2 years I have debated on any form of advertising let it be my own hosting company, or like my reviews of the Kindle Fire and Kindle Touch. Now that I think about it, its not so bad advertising non-hosting related stuff.  I also enjoyed writing up a review of my two new tech toys:

Kindle Fire: https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2799

Kindle Touch: https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/?p=2757

Which those reviews ended up paying for my two Kindle’s.  Well the Kindle Fire review paid for both.  I have yet to see any one buy a Touch (come on readers its better than a color device for reading).

Ultimately I think it would have been bad to advertise my own hosting company, while going after other companies.  Simply because this would have been just as bad as a creating a review site.  It would be like telling you my host is best, without actually telling you why.

I can say lately I have been debating about removing Google Adsense and going purely with advertisers that I control.  After all I had one ad come up a few days ago about Hot Thai’s, and I am not referring to cuisine.  That and I have blocked a lot of hosts.  Though I may very well restore every host back to appearing in Adsense.  I have been debating the fairness of blocking hosts while allowing others.  Which is why it would be easier just to stop using Google Adsense and have no hosts appear.

I am now a hosting customer like most of the people that visit here. Being a former hosting provider gives me some insight in what to expect.   I can’t say I am not bias, as there was a standard for the service I gave people when I was in the business.  Ultimately any host I recommend will have to be up to those standards.

Is there a host that I recommend?

Sorry to say but no, the list has grown shorter of hosts I am using which is MediaTemple and Rackspace.  However there are two new hosts that I am in the progress of trying.  Expect reviews this month.

So What will Hosting Reviews Exposed.com be doing next?

It’s a bit difficult to say where this site will go next.  It mostly depends on my free time.

One thing is for certain this site is getting slow again, and that means it needs to be moved to a more powerful system.  Which may mean I move from MediaTemple.

I defiantly plan to find if review sites are following the FTC guide lines and work with the hosts that appear on hosting review sites.  I also plan to post more reviews of hosts that I am using (I added a few) or ones that customers make me set up sites on (some good, most bad).  Not to mention hosts or web site related services that decided to spam me.  Honestly if they cannot afford real advertising they are not worth hosting with.  Perhaps next year I may recommend hosts, but I would not count on it me starting a hosting review endorsement.

Hosting-review.com contains malware

Hosting-review.com was one of the review sites featured in my first video.  The reason for a post on this site is a bit of an accident.  After Fatcow (an Endurance International Group) host contacted me to let me know hostingsthatsuck.com had a disclosure notice up.  Which happen some where around the time after I wrote Fatcow, and I was 2 days late from sending my notice.  I thought I would check a few other hosts that were in my sights for for reviewing, Hosting-review.com was one of them.  They do have a disclosure, which I had plan to review.  But the weird thing is their site was okay last night, but this morning without even refreshing their site I get this:

Now this is only for Google Chrome not on Internet Explorer, Opera,  and after having to re install the rather buggy Firefox it was not found there.  Safari is acting buggy on my machine

According to Google in regards to Hosting-review.com

What is the current listing status for hosting-review.com?

Site is listed as suspicious – visiting this web site may harm your computer.

Part of this site was listed for suspicious activity 2 time(s) over the past 90 days.

What happened when Google visited this site?

Of the 45 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 3 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2011-10-12, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2011-10-12.Malicious software includes 5 exploit(s), 1 trojan(s). Successful infection resulted in an average of 4 new process(es) on the target machine.

Malicious software is hosted on 3 domain(s), including 32hdtydjrdjhfgf.ce.ms/31ahflawigilajlif.ce.ms/24sjegohmjosee.ce.ms/.

1 domain(s) appear to be functioning as intermediaries for distributing malware to visitors of this site, including opienetwork.com/.

This site was hosted on 1 network(s) including AS26788 (BLINK).

Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further distribution of malware?

Over the past 90 days, hosting-review.com did not appear to function as an intermediary for the infection of any sites.

Has this site hosted malware?

No, this site has not hosted malicious software over the past 90 days.

How did this happen?

In some cases, third parties can add malicious code to legitimate sites, which would cause us to show the warning message.

intermediaries for the infection of 1 other site(s) including, for example, hosting-review.com/.

It appears Hosting-review has a Tim Thumb Exploit.

Is hostingsthatsuck.com Following the FTC compliance for Fatcow.com?

Last month Fatcow.com among other Endurance International Group hosts sent out FTC compliance emails.  For some reason while I had tons of people sending me their emails from cj.com, hostingsthatsuck.com appears to have not received the notice.  So I am going to make another wonderful post for them, where they can view said notice at:

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/endurance-international-group/fatcow-com.html

I am also going to point out why they are wrong.

http://www.hostingsthatsuck.com/fatcow-sucks/

If your don’t know why you should not trust hostingsthatsuck.com, here is why.

They work to be at the top of “(host name) sucks” in search engine results.  The reason why they do that is they know a lot of people try to find out rather a host is good or bad, though that particular search phrase.  They hope that you will go to their site and read why you should host with that host, and search no further.  In this case they want you to get an account with Fatcow.com so they can get $100 for every sign up, plus a performance bonus for bringing in x amount of customers (per month?).

Fatcow sucks? Beware – Read this Fatcow Review First | Even the Best Hosts Suck Sometimes

That is the header they give you, they want top ranking when you do a search for Fatcow.com sucks.  They want you to look no further then their site.  Here is how they try to prove they are on your side:

Some say Fatcow Hosting scams or Fatcow sucks? Saw some Fatcow.com issues, Fatcow complaints and bad customer experiences? Can these negative reviews be trusted? Heard some horror stories about their limitations?

This time around they decide to point to Fatcow.com’s BBB record.  Honestly I would never use the Better Business Burea as the finale measurement of trusting a company.  That and it proable needs a review of its own for the hosting companies that pay for their reviews.  Take a look at this ABC post on the BBB, and yes Wolfgang Puck still has an F rating.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/business-bureau-best-ratings-money-buy/story?id=12123843

Another site of interest is http://www.bbbroundup.com/

Read enough there, and you can see that I should be looking at the BBB in regards to so called hosting reviews.  So perhaps a post for another day.

But as of today does Fatcow have a A+ rating?

As you can tell going to link that hostingsthatsucks.com, fatcow does not own its own BBB acreditation, it shares it with other EIG owned companies.  Unlike what I did, hostingsthatsuck.com did not post a full shot of that rating, and yes I got that from the same exact link they point people to.

So how bad is Fatcow?

Personally I have tried a few of eig companies, Fatcow, Justhost, ipage, just to name a few. Always the service is to slow to do anything serious on.  For some bizarre reason people pay me a couple thousand to build a site, but they can’t be bothered to pay more then $100 a year to keep their site going.  Many of these clients burnt by other people because they choose to buy from someone offering their design at the price they wanted, only to disappoint them.

As hostingsthatsuck.com always does, it claims that you should buy Fatcow, because there are only a hand full of complaints against them.  For some reason Hostingsthatsuck.com tries to use Alexa to compare Fatcow against Ipower (also owned by EIG).  An Alexa rating has no bearing on weather a host is good or not.  It is a measure of traffic, and there are alot of host that have a higher rating and more complaints then fatcow.  Unfortunately I don’t have time to point them out.  But I am sure Hostgator.com has more complaints then fatcow, and it definatly has a higher alexa rating.

But as far as searches go, the top 2 pages are mostly affiliates such as hostingsthatsuck.com.  But there is one site that has more then 8 complaints http://www.web-hosting-top.com/review/fatcow.com

So is hostingsthatsuck.com ftc compliant?  No, despite the many “discount” links, there is no full disclosure that they get paid by fatcow.com for any referral. Lets see if Fatcow is serious about that email they sent, and will do something about it.

Whybluehost.com – Too Good to be True

With my last post on Bluehost, I found myself looking to see if whybluehost.com was still around. Whybluehost.com was a site that was trying to push other people to do their affilate work, and offering other people a chance at an iPad if they signed up through the for a bluehost.com account.  Turns out there is a generic place holder up where the site used to be.  A place holder filled with ppc ads. This site becomes a cautionary tale of why it does not pay to spam. A tale of looking beyond whats being offered.  Bottom line buyer beware!!!

This was the site that promised me , if I sold I sold 25 hosting accounts with Bluehost.com that they would give you an iPad (cheapest model) and $550.   Unfortunately that would have been a step down for me as I had the deluxe model of the first version, and never mind going straight through Bluehost.com’s own affiliate program I would get $1,625 at $65 per sale  on 25 sales (now its $2250 at $90 per sale).   Like most companies that choose to comment spam where ever there is an opening they have no idea who gets their spam.  So as karma would have it, he spammed me.   Back in June 2010 I was still warming up to doing some regular blogging.  It did not take much inspriration to make a post on this affiliate.  As I really hate spam.

Whybluehost.com goes to Flippa

Last year not sure the exact month, I am assuming late July or early August.  But whybluehost.com went up for sale on Flippa.   There are a few things that are wrong with this site, as the seller was far less then honest.

https://flippa.com/101262-earning-130-month-5-yrs-free-hosting-proven-niche-moneymaker

REVENUE DETAILS

June- $65 (1 sale)

July- $130 (2 sales)

These sales were achieved without any type of AdWords campaign or traffic building techniques. The site was literally sitting on my “to do” list and it got sales without me having to lift a finger.I strongly recommend that the new owner of this site to take the time to build targeted traffic and run an AdWords campaign to maximize the best results.

See Attachments For More Detail

As you can tell no one came in to make enough sales to get a iPad.  But he lied about “The site was literally sitting on my “to do” list and it got sales without me having to lift a finger.“.  You can go to my orginal post to see that he was going around spamming through YouTube.

https://hosting-reviews-exposed.com/bad-affiliate-programs/whybluehost-com-is-not-the-place-to-try-and-be-an-affiliate-for-bluehost-com.html

It appear the site sold for a whopping $150.

Frankly I would avoid buying from someone on flippa if they do not accept Escrow.

If memory serves me correctly, there was a claim of giving out an iPad.  Granted I did not take a snap shot, and the original site was gone.  Now more then a year later the site has become nothing more then ppc page holder until the domain expires.

I am not the only one that was offered to be an affilate under whybluehost

http://www.youtube.com/user/wlchrbanditgaming

Want the chance to win an iPad?

So, here’s the deal! The first 25 people to purchase Bluehost hosting through whybluehost.com will be entered into a fair and unbiased drawing for a free iPad.

You can find the video by searching youtube.com for “whybluehost”.

I had contacted this affilate, and made it clear that he could go directly to Bluehost.com and make more, but he made it clear he did not care.

In the end whybluehost is an example of using cation when it comes to hosting review sites.

Never mind this was someone that wanted other people to do his sales work for him, and pay less the more someone sold.  Or the fact that he was not even hosted on  Bluehost.com.  From the stand point of being an affiliate, what is going to stop a person from going directly to bluehost.com to find they could earn more?  I can’t say I was worried too much about affiliates finding out what I did doing 2 minutes of research most of which involved finding my calculator.  My biggest problem is I notified bluehost,com and never received a response on any action they might take to remove whybluehost’s affiliate id.  Would have been nice to know they had taken action against whybluehost.