Many so-called “web hosting review” sites have many problems with them that you may want to consider before entrusting your entire business website to them, lest you end up with more headaches than you need.

First, many “web hosting review” sites offer only what seem to be real reviews, whereas behind the scenes one of the web hosting companies themselves is the owner of the actual review site! Coincidentally, the host owning the site seems to come up at the top of all lists and is the best rated. In other words, the review site is just a promotional front.

Secondly, and related to the first problem, even if the review site isn’t actually owned by any hosting company it can be quickly overrun by phony reviews from employees of the hosting companies. And the bad hosts are more motivated to do this as they may have a bad reputation elsewhere on the web. This is quite common on Amazon.com, with authors’ friends creating fake accounts and reviewing just the one book, giving it five stars.

Lastly, many hosts offer commission based upon getting others to sign up with them, and many of the “web hosting review” sites are set up so the highest paying commission hosts are also, strangely, the best reviewed. Hosts that pay little or no commission may not be on the site at all. This is hardly what you would call an honest site.

Keep these caveats in mind when searching for web hosting reviews, or potentially end up with a poor quality hosting provider that gives you endless headaches when you attempt to house your website with them. One way to avoid these problems is to seek out user comments on forums and blogs instead of looking for actual named “reviews.” You can often find many people complaining about or praising web hosts like this that don’t ever mention they are actually “reviewing” a site.

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