How we test web hosting services

Whether you want to start a blog, build a hobby site, create a professional portfolio, or build an online business, you need web hosting. CNET offers expert-tested, hands-on web hosting reviews to help you choose the right company for your web hosting needs.

Web hosting makes your site accessible to online visitors by placing it on a web server. The web host you choose determines your site’s ability to run continuously, receive your incoming visitors, and remain secure. Your choice of web host can also affect your site’s loading speed and how easy it is to maintain. So choosing a high-quality web hosting service is important.

How we test web hosting

Navigating the world of web hosting is complicated. There are different types of web hosting and thousands of companies to choose from. There are also a lot of technical terms and complex pricing structures to scratch your head.

CNET’s web hosting team includes Dianna Gunn, an expert who has built websites and reviewed web hosts for more than 15 years. She primarily conducts our testing, starting with extensive research on web hosting companies to understand what they offer, how their pricing structure works, and what their customers think of them.

After initial research, Gunn conducts field tests on each web hosting service she reviews. She builds a website for each service to determine how easy it is to set up, and then assesses key performance metrics, including speed and uptime. She also liaises with customer service to compare response time and quality of assistance. A web hosting provider must perform well in all of these areas to earn an Editors’ Choice designation.

Most of our reviews test shared hosting, as it is the best type of hosting for most consumers who want to start a hobby site, blog, or small business website for fun. This process may vary as we test other types of web hosting, such as VPS hosting or dedicated hosting.

How we test web hosting performance

The two most important factors we test to determine website performance are uptime and speed.

Uptime

Uptime is the amount of time your website spends online. Most web hosts offer a guaranteed uptime of 99.9% or 99.99%. A 99.9% guarantee means your site won’t be offline for more than 10 minutes per week, while a 99.99% guarantee means your site won’t be offline for more than 2 minutes per week. Please note that these uptime guarantees cover server errors; downtime due to things like failed WordPress updates is not covered.

We use the Better Stack Uptime Monitoring Tool to monitor a website’s uptime for a week. Host services are then ranked on a scale of 1 to 10. If the test site has less than one minute of downtime during the week, the service is rated a 10. If our site has 1 to 2 minutes of downtime during that time frame, the service is rated a 9. If the test shows 6 to 10 minutes of downtime, the hosting service receives a 6. A score of 1 is reserved for hosts with 15 or more minutes of downtime in a week.

Speed

Website speed is how long it takes for your website to load, measured in seconds. The most important factor in website loading times is how well you have optimized your site, but your hosting can also affect your loading speed.

We use the WebPageTest tool to test load times on desktop and mobile in California, the UK, Germany, India, Australia and Dubai to get a good idea of ​​how effective the host is at delivering data to people around the world. Tests are performed on different weekdays and at different times to calculate an average charging speed.

Hosts with average load times of less than one second receive a ranking of 10, while hosts with average load times of 1 to 2 seconds receive a 9. Hosts with average load times of 5.1 to 6 seconds receive a ranking of 5, and hosts with average load times of 9 or more seconds receive a ranking of 1.

Some web hosts include the following features to improve site speed:

• Non-volatile memory express — NVMe — storage: An advanced version of solid-state drive or SSD storage with faster processing.
• Caching: A software that stores important data in quick-access storage tiers so that it can be accessed almost immediately by visitors’ browsers.
• Content Delivery Networks, or CDNs: These use a network of interconnected servers, so visitors’ browsers load your site from the server closest to them.

These tools will be mentioned in reviews, but on their own will not improve a hosting service’s ranking in terms of loading speeds; these factors are instead considered in the value ranking. That ranking is entirely based on how fast our test site loads.

How we test the most important features of web hosting

We test three key features of web hosting: the purchasing experience, account management, and cPanel, or the equivalent used by the provider.

The buying experience

We pay attention to two things in the purchasing process: simplicity and transparency. Simplicity focuses on how accessible the purchasing process is and how many upsells (places where the company tries to sell you unnecessary add-ons, such as a Microsoft Office subscription) you have to navigate.

The most important factor in transparency is renewal prices. Many hosts increase prices by $10 or more per month when you complete your first hosting term, and they aren’t always honest about this. Some also charge extra for essentials, such as a Secure Socket Layer–SSL—certificate. These additional costs will be discussed when we look at the purchasing experience.

Account management

The next thing we consider is how easy it is to navigate the hosting company’s dashboard. This includes viewing and managing domains and hosting plans. We’ll also look at how intuitive it is to access your cPanel or an equivalent site management tool.

Website and server management

Finally, we look at the host’s server and site management tool. Most hosts use cPanel because it is affordable and easy to use. When testing these hosts, we check that the cPanel is functional and not missing any important features. If a host uses an alternative solution such as the hPanel created by Hostingerwe’ll take a closer look at how easy it is to use and how it compares to cPanel.

These factors are used to rank the hosting company’s most important features from 1 to 10, with 10 being the best and 1 being the worst.

How we assess the value of web hosting

Web hosting pricing is complex, with many caveats to understand before shopping for a hosting provider. We look at four areas of value to give you a comprehensive understanding of the value of each landlord.

We consider first initial pricingas most web hosts offer a high discount for the first term if you sign up before a certain time. We take into account what you get, how long your first term should be to get the best discount, and whether or not you’ll have to pay additional fees during that period, such as domain renewal fees halfway through a three-year term.

Then we investigate renewal prices. This is the amount you pay to keep your subscription after the first term. The main thing we’re looking at here is how much the price increase reduces the value of the plan. We will also consider whether discounts are available for longer terms upon renewal.

We’ll take a look too other hosting types. The main thing we analyze here is how many other plans are available. This is important to consider because sites may grow to a point where they need to move to a more advanced hosting type, and this is easier if you can stay with the same hosting company.

Finally, we will consider how the host compares to other options. We compare the plans next to the top competitors to see if they have similar features to other plans in the same price range. We compare both the initial price and the renewal price.

We use all these factors to rank the web host value on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best value.

How we evaluate web hosting customer service

The first part of customer service we test is the web host’s knowledge base. We look at how accessible it is from the account dashboard, how easy it is to search, and how comprehensive and digestible the resources are.

We then communicate with customer service via all available lines of communication. We’ll ask them questions about how to perform common website management tasks through their host. We then rate each line of communication on a scale of 1 to 10 and use those numbers to create an overall rating of our customer service experience.

One person having a great experience doesn’t necessarily mean customer support is generally excellent, so we’ll also look at reviews on sites like Trustpilot. If we encounter many problematic reviews or discover that a host is using fake reviews to improve their reputation, we will mention it in our review. This will be considered separately from our assessment of our own customer service experience.

Overall rating

Once we complete our testing, we combine the rankings from each test category to create an overall rating from 1 to 10. Host companies that achieve an overall rating of 9 to 10 will receive an Editor’s Choice award and be added to our list of the best web hosts. Hosting companies rated 6 to 8 receive recommendations for specific use cases. A hosting company with a ranking of 5 or lower is not recommended at all.