Corrections Policy
Why a hosting site needs a corrections policy
A news article is finished the day it is published. A hosting review is wrong the day the vendor changes its pricing table, which can be next Tuesday. HOSTING123 treats accuracy as a maintenance job, not a one-time event, and this page explains the machinery: how errors and outdated information get found, how fast they get fixed, and how visibly we admit them. The short version is that we would rather carry a correction note than a wrong number, because a review site’s only real asset is being believable.
Two kinds of wrong
We distinguish between errors and staleness, because they are fixed differently.
Errors: wrong when we published it
A mistyped price, a benchmark chart with mislabeled hosts, a feature we said a plan lacks that it actually includes, a support-response time recorded against the wrong ticket. These are our fault, they are fixed as soon as verified, and material ones get a visible correction note on the page stating what was wrong and when it was fixed. We do not silently rewrite substantive mistakes.
Staleness: right then, wrong now
The renewal price went up, the plan was renamed, the host was acquired, the free tier was discontinued. The original text was accurate on its date. These are fixed through our update cycle: the page is revised, the last-verified date changes, and where the change is significant to a buying decision, such as a price increase or a feature removal, the review notes what changed and when. A stale recommendation can cost a reader real money at renewal, so pricing staleness is treated with the same urgency as error.
How problems get found
- Scheduled reverification: pricing and plan structures on reviewed hosts are rechecked on a rotating schedule, against the checkout cart rather than the marketing page, because the two disagree more often than you would hope.
- Continuous monitoring: uptime monitors stay attached to test accounts after a review ships, so a host that degrades gets caught by the data rather than by an angry comment thread.
- Reader reports: the single best error-detection system we have. Readers hit checkout pages every day in regions and currencies we do not.
- Vendor reports: hosts sometimes write in about their own reviews. Factual claims from vendors are verified exactly like reader reports, no faster and no slower, and verification means our own retest, not the vendor’s word.
How to report a problem
Email support@hosting123.org with the page URL, the specific claim you believe is wrong, and what you saw instead. For pricing, include the date, the region or currency, and ideally a screenshot of the checkout, since promotional prices vary by both time and place. You do not need to prove your case; you need to give us enough to check it. We read every report, we prioritise anything that could affect a purchase decision, and if your report changes a page we will tell you so if you want to know.
Severity and speed
- Purchase-affecting facts (prices, renewal terms, refund windows, discontinued plans, a review score resting on now-false data): verified and fixed at the front of the queue, with a correction or update note where material.
- Substantive but not purchase-critical (a spec detail, a mislabeled chart series, an outdated screenshot): fixed in days, noted where it matters.
- Typos and formatting: fixed silently. A correction note for a spelling fix would be noise, not transparency.
What we will not do
We will not delete a review because a vendor dislikes it, and we will not backdate or silently alter measured results. If a benchmark was run wrong, we say so and rerun it; the flawed chart is replaced, not memory-holed. Score changes always come from data, never from complaints, and the review’s change history is reflected in its notes. Our Editorial Standards page covers the independence side of this; our Fact-Checking Policy covers how claims are verified in the first place.
