I do a little web hosting on the side. Only for friends or companies that are run by friends, though. Depending on what they want I charge somewhere between 10 and 40 euros a year. If you don't know the dollar/euro exchange rate, just assume it's 1:1 for now.<p>I've also built several web-hosting (static HTML and PHP/MySQL) systems for ISPs (years ago) along with the management and backup solutions to go with them.<p>I make a small loss doing the hosting I do for friends, but that doesn't bother me.<p>I over the years I've often been asked by the people buying my services why I am more expensive than a lot of advertised hosting services.<p>Ha! More expensive, now there's a joke. The key word is 'advertised'. I basically re-sell capacity below cost and re-sell domain registration at cost plus one euro a year for administrative overhead (read : the cost of sending a yearly invoice through snail-mail).<p>My hosting services are 'expensive' because this is what the actual cost is.<p>If I'm running this at a loss in my spare time on a good-will basis, why are there parties out there with full-time staff charging <i>less</i> for (superficially) identical services?<p>Well, let's see..<p>Registering a domain with a random party is generally a bad idea. For example, some hosting companies put themselves in the registrant information (as owner). In other words, the domain doesn't belong to you and you do not have control over it. Not something a non-techie will know or understand (unless you explain it to them).<p>The price for registering a domain is generally lower when you go with a big hoster, because these organizations have bulk registration deals, which lowers the price they have to pay to register an individual domain. Buy 1 domain at 10 euros, buy 1000 at 1000.<p>Some hosters also play bandwidth games. Ooops, you got linked from a major site and that's caused a spike - which is why your site is now shut down. Please wait 24 hours or upgrade to 'premium'.<p>Pay extra for email. Oh yeah, this is a popular one. Besides not having proper forwarding facilities (or a POP or IMAP server - forward to one address only), many providers will store any email on their own systems and charge for it. Bonus points for "adding email addresses to your domain", which will cost more (of course).
This is true. Fake review sites are one of the top categories of spam here:<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Jaheem12" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=Jaheem12</a><p>(You have to turn on showdead in your profile to see spam.)
Hosting is a 'market for lemons':<p><a href="http://www.welton.it/articles/webhosting_market_lemons.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.welton.it/articles/webhosting_market_lemons.html</a><p>Interestingly, one of the ways to get around information asymmetry problems is testing, certification, and, yes, reviews. But if the review sites are corrupt, that kind of brings you back to square one.
So right now the old I-hate-Java-frameworks post from 2005 and this one from 2006 are both front page "news." Has the internet finally run out of actual news? Perhaps it is a dump truck, after all, as opposed to a series of tubes.
Payola and affiliate programs and such are not particular news.<p>Industry analysts and consulting houses can have similar profit motives for their recommendations and implementations over the years, too.<p>There was a bogus application that showed how shady some of the software award sites can be, too: <a href="http://successfulsoftware.net/2007/08/16/the-software-awards-scam/" rel="nofollow">http://successfulsoftware.net/2007/08/16/the-software-awards...</a><p>Even grocery and department stores can have financial considerations around product placement and the location and quantity of shelf space for a product that is made available within the store.<p>When in doubt (and when you can), always follow the money.
Sounds like a market opportunity. No-BS Hosting Reviews. Affiliate free. Require proof of being a customer (placing an HTML file on their server) to reduce gaming. Sell ads, but make a clear distinction between reviews and ads.
They're right, but I doubt this post will have much effect. It's a profitable game and of the thousands of people who click through to that hosting review site, very few are already Dreamhost customers, have read Dreamhost's blog, or, heck, probably even know what a "blog" is.<p>All those horrendous price comparison sites, catalog sites, and other junk sites are still out there and still thriving just because consumers are pretty ignorant when it comes to online research. These sites won't be going away any time soon, alas.
I'm actually launching a hosting review site right now (tonight) so it's interesting this came up. I've found this is very much the case across all hosting review sites.<p>I decided to shift focus towards working with hosts (any host) that want to be included in the directory, whether they had an affiliate program or not.<p>Of course if a host happens to have an affiliate program, I see no reason to not use it as long as your transparent with your users.<p>Plus it keeps the site free of regular banner advertising.
Wow, they aren't even shy about it: all of the advertisers on their front page (except adsense) are also in the top 10 list. Shouldn't that be a conflict of interest?
But they just seem so trustworthy!<p>Maybe there's a market for a hosting reviews site run by some company or some person with a good existing reputation.<p>Same goes for domain registrations, DNS providers etc.
A web hosting review site sounds like an opportunity to make money. But like all profitable ideas, the competition reaches a critical mass and the inefficient die.