The last few months have been a hectic nonstop onslaught of work. As the end of the year comes around my work load starts to lessen, and I find myself looking for content to get me back into the swing of things with hosting-reviews-exposed.com. Inspiration it appears is not far away. All I have to do is look at the email for this site to see tons of requests from companies asking to be profiled, asking for me to write a hosting review. Hosting review is not what I would use to label this site. Sure it is in the title, but so is the word” exposed”. For some reason the third word in this site’s domain is over looked by not just those looking for a hosting provider, but those who will do anything regardless of ethics to make a buck.
Little has been done by me to actually show anything in the way of use. What few hosts I have used and written a hosting review on are less than stellar. Godaddy.com was at best luke warm, and up till the point Bob Parson decided to shoot an elephant I had an affiliate link up. Clearly due to a lack of affiliate commissions between the start of that post to the time Mr. Parson mistakenly thought he could turn a vacation into charity proved I had convinced no one to buy. After all I did not make them look like a long term solution, and probable only best at handling a single page site.
Then there is my hosting review on Mediatemple. Despite two attempts to them to respond to my issues I have yet to get a reply on either post, which makes me think perhaps maybe I will not go back if they are not willing to address issues with their company.
Then there are hosts like Burst.net and Layeredtech.com (formerly Fastservers.net (formally powersurge)), I can only hope that people would take my own problems as a clear reason to avoid those hosts. There are also the hosts that I did not write about like OChosting, serverbeach, dialtone and virtualis all of which have been bought up. Since I had not been with them after they were bought up I did not see a reason to post a hosting review on any of those companies. They may be worse they may be better.
For that matter I had been a customer of another company that merged into ThePlanet. I could give you reasons not to try them under their new ownership Softlayer such as they host webhostingstuff.com. But my relationship with them had little dealings, especially since they have made it a point to stop colocation. My time with ThePlanet and their previous incarnation were less than stellar. The first time I ordered with them I waited 7 days and got nothing, contacted them after seeing I had been billed and had been bullied by a sales rep that insisted I never ordered. Despite in the end proving I was right, the jackass on the other end made it a point to call me and hang up on me at every opportunity. I thought after ThePlanet took over perhaps that would change, clearly the sales rep was gone. But ordering had been a hassle still. I admit they were pretty good at keeping my accounts active, but they were not good at starting accounts. Not to mention there was the matter of a $7,800 they over billed my company, that went unnoticed till we brought on a new accountant. They wanted me to fax them a copy of the billing notices which our accountant got off of their system. It took a whole month before they gave in and did a refund without any apology. Keep in mind this is a company that does not give a lot of slack when it came to paying a bill which I found out after I requested sometime after we had a card that had been compromised. Not the first of the billing issues I had with their company. Not to mention like Mediatemple.net Theplanet has no interest in customers during the holiday season. After two bad mergers and a lack of colocation I see no reason to see if Softlayer was worth staying around with.
At this point perhaps the only company I am willing to give a nod to is Rackspace. Details on that may come at the start of next year. But to be honest I don’t feel all that comfortable to recommending any host on this site.
The original focus of this site has never really been to write hosting reviews. It has been to focus on the hosting review industry. I would like to think that this site is more of a warning.
In short I am writing this to be lazy when responding to hosts when they say something like:
“Hi. This is my second time sending you an email on how we can get our business included on your listing. I understand that you might have a lot of inquiries coming but I will greatly appreciate if you will
answer this email. We would like to add our business Budget VM on your VPS Hosting List. What is the procedure? and what about the price?”
Thanks.” – Budgetvm.com
“We are writing because we are interested to advertise on your website, related to web hosting review niche hosting-reviews-exposed.com. “ – Dailyrazor.com
“You currently promote hosting companies via their affiliate system. We would love for you to join ours.” – Interserver.net
“we would like to tell you our hosting company Cms Best Hosting” – cmsbesthosting.com
Clearly they want me to do a positive hosting review. As some of them indicate either paying me per review or asking me to join their affiliate program. So in short no one bothered to read what my site is about.
Back in August Ixwebhosting.com was unhappy because they thought I did not have a review about their company. Sure they could have looked to see if their host was on my site in the search box up in the top right hand corner, or even used a search engine by typing in their site and hosting-reviews-exposed.com. Since they did not answer my questions I can only assume that they came here because they thought this was a hosting review site. Being what I would call the ashes of featured price hosting, I could not resist doing a second post.
I realize that most of the review sites out there use gimmicks similar to the theme of this site. Like hostingsthatsuck.com their gig is to dominate “*host name* sucks”, and feed a spill about said company not sucking. They claim there are not that many valid search engine results. Which works so long as the reader looks no further.
Then there is this new trend of review sites that are popping up lately where they state something about the industry being rigged, but you should trust them. They provide a lose list of what to look for in a flawed industry. I think the funniest one was:
Check if there are affiliate programs offered with the service you are interested in. Judging by how much they offer, and how it is offered. Keep in mind, that this is a sliding scale and marketers always barter for better rates in return for better reviews.
So I did as they said, and guess what, the very first list on their top list, you could make $75 – 150.
Just to be clear I am not asking people to trust me, but look for themselves. I point to where I find details. Did the company say they were 10 years old? Well than let’s have a look at their domain whois, and after that lets look at http://wayback.archive.org. Did a company advertise they offer a 90 day guarantee, but I read the terms of service that states you had to sign up for a year or more. For that I am going to point people to that part in the terms of service where the loop hole was. Don’t take my word for it, and actually look for yourself.
I would like to think I do more than they do, more than just spew out specifications of a company’s packages. Nor give some ramble about how they are the best at, or such and such companies’ focuses on “fill in the blank”. The point of this site is not to help people find a host, it is to see that review sites don’t always have the consumer’s interests in mind. Generally they are paid by hosting provider, most often by affiliate commissions. In short buyer beware, a little doubt is a good thing.
So that we are clear this really isn’t a site about where to find the best host. Its about of all things a review of hosts who employee hosting reviews.
Over the next few weeks I plan on covering the issues on these sites looking for review sites to endorse them outlining what exactly it is I am looking for.
