WHSR Review Policy

Why Trust Our Hosting Reviews?

You can find a lot of web hosting review sites and directories on the Internet. But, none of them are the same as Web Hosting Secret Revealed (WHSR).

At WHSR, web hosting companies are reviewed from the inside. This means our reviews are written based on our own usage experience. Our reviewer team, lead by WHSR founder Jerry Low, signup, examine, and review the hosting companies listed on WHSR.

I don’t go to a web host, look at their designs and web features and tell you “Hey look, this web host offers this and that. It sounds like a good host so yeah, you should go with this web host”. That’s silly and not how we operate.

Instead, we spend tremendous volumes of time and money on new hosting signups and testing. You’ll get nothing but useful information, such as screen captures, uptime reports, chat records, and CEO interviews, in our review.

Review factors: Things we evaluate

Here are the things we do to evaluate a web host.

1. Sign-up process Is signing up smooth and easy? We signup and setup a test site for each host we review.
2. Server speed and uptime All test sites are monitored internally (we build our own uptime monitoring system) AND third party (using tools like Uptime Robot and Bitcatcha) for the host performances.
3. Control panel features Is the user control panel comprehensive and easy to use? This is especially important if the host is using an in-house control panel.
4. Customer care policy Is the pricing and refund policy fair? We read up companies’ ToS to learn their refund and account renewal policy.
5. Company reputation What others are saying about the company? We spend hours, sometimes days, to read up users’ feedback and reviews on forums.
6. After sales support Is the support staff friendly and knowledgeable? We chat and email hosting companies to test their after sales support.

How Our Star Rating Works?

At WHSR, each hosting company are rated based on a simple five-star-rating system – with five stars being the best and zero star the worst. Host ratings and summary are displayed at the top of each review for the easy review.

Note that the star rating is not a ranking system. Each star in the rating system represents one of the five points we examine during our review process:

• Hosting Features
• Price
• Server Reliability
• Customer Support
• User friendliness and overall reputations

The hosting company gets a star () if it meets our expectations* in one of the listed points; the company gets an empty star () if otherwise. A web host with a 5-star rating means that it has met all five of our requirements during our testing and review period. Likewise, a web host with a 4-star rating has only fulfilled four of our five requirements.

*Note: Expectation varies from person to person; and from time to time. Years ago, it was okay to pay $10/month for a 5GB/50GB storage/bandwidth hosting account; now, that is totally unacceptable. In our rating system, web hosting companies are judged and rated based on industry standards. Let’s take budget hosting (below $5/mo) for instance – If the average uptime score for budget hosting is 99.95% , we will give a star to all hosting companies who score 99.95% or higher in their uptime results; and zero start for hosting companies that go below 99.95%.

Affiliate Links & Promo Codes

As stated clearly in our website disclaimer page and every page of our hosting reviews, WHSR receive compensation from some of the service providers (both hosting and non-hosting) featured in this site. We get paid, in form of cash or other form of rewards (ie. a link, free hosting credits, Amazon gift cards, or a thank you email), if you click on our affiliate links and make a purchase.

FAQ #1. Affiliates are all blood suckers on the Internet!

First off, there’s nothing shady on making money via affiliate sales. The big brands including Amazon, eBay, Agoda, offer affiliate programs; and many of your favorite sites use affiliate marketing to pay the bills.

A site like WHSR takes lots of money and effort to build and maintain. Hosting servers and domains (don’t forget the dummy sites we setup to test the web hosts) are expensive when we run at this scale. Not to mention that we are running on a small-but-focused in-house team – writers, editors, WordPress developers, social media managers – I need to pay everyone well to maintain our site quality.

I believe in honesty and I see our integrity as a win-win. Moreover, I believe you are smart enough to see the difference between junks and useful piece of work.

We strike hard in giving you the best, fair, and honest reviews at all time. If a web host is proven bad, I will tell you it’s bad; if a web host is good, we will give a 5-star to it. Our job here is to compare, review, and examine hosting companies so you can make informed purchase decision.

That said, I do not encourage you to fully take in our words – what looks right to me might not be good enough for you. As a smart web users, you should always read between the lines and make your own judgement.

FAQ #2: Will making a purchase via your affiliate links cost more?

Short answer: No.

In fact, some of our affiliate links will save you money.

Here’s how things work – In order to win more new customers, brands and companies offer special discounts (in form of special promo link or coupon code) to popular websites and top affiliates. Due to WHSR’s unique market position, we often get exclusive deals and special discounts from web hosting and domain companies. This in turn benefits our readers and followers (that’s you!).

FAQ #3: Is my information safe with you guys?

Absolutely yes! We do not see any of your personal information (name, address, credit card details, etc) when you purchase via our affiliate links.

For those who subscribed to our newsletter – your email and name are the only two attributes I keep in my Mail Chimp database. You can unsubscribe any time and get your details deleted (no question ask!) anytime in the future; and I will never ever pass on your contact to others.

If you are still in doubt, please learn more about my team and read our Official FTC Disclaimer.