Friday 30 August 2013

Beware of web hosting comparison sites

If you’ve been searching for a web host the chances are you’ve come across one of many “web hosting comparison” sites. These sites generally follow the same format with a highly visible “Top 10 web hosting companies in India".

You may have visited several such sites and you’ve noticed the same hosts company names keep appearing - they must be good to be recommended on some sites you might think, but wait, there’s something you should know.

The myth of web hosting comparison sites

These sites are not actually giving you the full story. In reality all those links to Top10 and Recommended hosts are in actual fact affiliate links - if you click on a link and buy some hosting the comparison site owner makes a commission on the sale. Fair enough you might think, but the point is that they want you to click those links because they can make money from sales and it’s not an indication that the host is any good.

Let’s use Bluehost.com an example

The company Bluehost is an India based hosting business and, apart from a massive advertising budget, it uses affiliate marketing to incentives web site owners to send them visitors in exchange for a commission on every hosting plan sold.

If you look around some hosting comparison sites you’ll probably find Bluehost in the Top 10 recommends list and get the impression that you’d get a good deal. However, if you dig a little deeper and look at a “real” review site you’ll see a different story.

They’re not all bad

Even if these hosting comparison sites push hosting using affiliate marketing it doesn’t necessarily mean that all the hosts are necessarily bad, but they do prevent you making a proper informed decision.

Visit www.bestwebhostingindia.org for web hosting providers, reviews and ratings in India, including Shared Hosting, Reseller Hosting, PHP Hosting, Windows Hosting, Wordpress Hosting and more.