Editorial Standards & Ethics
The one-sentence version
HOSTING123 reviews hosting the way we would want it reviewed if we were the ones buying: paid for with our own money, measured with instruments rather than adjectives, ranked before the commission table is consulted, and corrected in public when we get it wrong. This page is the long version, and it is the standard every page on hosting123.org is held to.
How a review is made
We buy the plan
Test accounts are purchased anonymously at retail price, with our own money, through the vendor’s normal checkout. We do not accept free accounts, upgraded resources, or “reviewer environments”, because a host that knows it is being watched behaves like a host that is being watched. The account looks like any other customer, which means the support desk, the server assignment, and the renewal invoice we experience are the ones you would get.
We run a real workload
Each account gets a standardised test site deployed the same way on every host in its category: for shared and WordPress hosting, a realistic WordPress install with a common theme and plugin load; for other categories, a workload appropriate to the product. Identical workloads are what make cross-host comparisons legitimate; a benchmark that changes shape between hosts is a story, not a measurement.
We measure over time
- Uptime: independent external monitoring attached for weeks before a review ships, and left attached after, so reviews can be updated when reality changes.
- Speed: response times measured from stated locations, plus load testing to see behaviour under concurrency, not just on an idle Tuesday.
- Support: real tickets and chats from the anonymous account, with response and resolution times logged, and the quality of the answer judged, since a fast wrong answer is worse than a slower right one.
- Money: the checkout price, the renewal price, the refund process where we test it, and any charge that appeared without being clearly disclosed. Renewal pricing is a headline criterion because it is where hosting companies hide the real cost.
We write down the method
Benchmark charts state what was measured, from where, and over what date range. A number without a method is an opinion wearing a costume, and we try not to publish those.
Independence: the rules that have teeth
Our funding comes from affiliate commissions and advertising, which is disclosed everywhere it matters, including our Disclaimer and Ownership and Funding page. Disclosure alone is not integrity, so the following rules are mechanical rather than aspirational:
- No pay-for-review. A host cannot pay to be reviewed, to be reviewed sooner, to improve a score, or to have a review removed. There is no rate card for any of these because they are not for sale.
- Rankings before links. Scores and comparison rankings are finalised from test data before affiliate considerations enter. Writers and testers do not see commission rates, and the person attaching links does not adjust rankings.
- No-commission hosts get equal treatment. Plans from vendors with no affiliate program are bought and tested identically. Some of our category winners pay us nothing, and they stay winners for as long as the data says so.
- No preview copies. Vendors see reviews when readers do. Factual complaints after publication go through the Corrections Policy like anyone else’s.
- No undisclosed sponsored content. If a page is sponsored it is labelled as such, and sponsored pages never carry review scores. The full policy is on the Advertise With Us page.
- Personal conflicts are disqualifying. An editor with a financial interest in a vendor, beyond the site-level affiliate arrangements disclosed above, does not test or score that vendor.
Writing standards
Claims are attributed: a number we measured is presented as ours with its date range, a number a vendor claims is labelled as the vendor’s claim, and the two are never blended. Marketing language is quoted only to examine it; “unlimited” appears in our reviews mostly next to the paragraph of the vendor’s terms that defines its limits. Verification practice is specified in the Fact-Checking Policy. We write for the reader deciding where to put a real website and a real recurring payment, which means the renewal price, the refund terms, and the migration path get at least the attention the promotional price gets.
Reviews are maintained, not abandoned
Every review carries a last-verified date. Pricing is rechecked on a schedule, monitors stay attached, and material changes update the score, up as well as down. A host that fixes what we criticised gets the improvement reflected; a host that decayed since our test gets that reflected too. Reviews old enough that we can no longer stand behind them are retested or visibly marked as historical.
When we fall short
We have published a wrong number before and we will again, because the error rate of publishing is not zero. The commitment is not perfection; it is that errors get fixed at the speed they deserve and admitted at the visibility they deserve, per the Corrections Policy. If you think a page on this site fails the standards described here, say so: support@hosting123.org. That address reaches the editors, and this page is the yardstick we have agreed to be measured by.
