How We Test Web Hosting Services – CNET [CNET]

A breakdown of the full process we use to test web hosting services for our reviews and best-of lists.

Whether you’re looking to start a blog, build a hobby site, create a professional portfolio or establish an online business, you’ll 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 will determine your site’s ability to run continuously, accommodate your incoming visitors and stay secure. Your choice of web host can also affect your site’s loading speeds 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 several types of web hosting and thousands of companies to choose from. There are also many technical terms and complex pricing structures that can leave you scratching your head.

CNET’s web hosting team includes Dianna Gunn, an expert who has spent over 15 years building websites and reviewing web hosts. She primarily conducts our tests, beginning with extensive research on web hosting companies to understand what they offer, how their pricing structure works and how their customers feel about them.

After the initial research, Gunn performs hands-on tests of every web hosting service she reviews. She builds a website on each service to determine how easy it is to set up, then assesses key performance metrics including speed and uptime. She also connects with customer service to benchmark the 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 this is the best type of hosting for most consumers who want to start a for-fun hobby site, blog or small business website. This process may vary if we test other types of web hosting, such as VPS hosting or dedicated hosting.

How we test web hosting performance

The two main 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 99.9% or 99.99% guaranteed uptime. 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 go down for more than 2 minutes per week. Note that these uptime guarantees relate to server errors; downtime due to things like botched WordPress updates is not covered.

We use the Better Stack Uptime Monitoring Tool to monitor a website’s uptime over the course of one week. Hosting services are then ranked on a scale of 1 to 10. If the test site has under one minute of downtime during the week, the service receives a 10. If our site has 1 to 2 minutes of downtime in that timeframe, the service receives a 9. If the test shows 6 to 10 minutes of downtime, the hosting service gets a 6. A ranking of 1 is reserved for hosts with 15 or more minutes of downtime in a week.

Speed

Website speed is how long it takes your website to load. The main factor in website loading times is how well you’ve optimized your site, but your hosting can also influence your loading speed.

We use the WebPageTest tool to test loading times on desktop and mobile in California, the UK, Germany, India, Australia and Dubai for a good idea of how effective the host is at delivering data to people around the globe. Tests are conducted on different weekdays at various times and used to calculate an average loading speed. 

Hosts with average loading times under one second will receive a ranking of 10, while hosts with average loading times of 1 to 2 seconds will receive a 9. Hosts with average loading times of 5.1 to 6 seconds will receive a ranking of 5, and hosts with an average loading time of 9 or more seconds will receive a ranking of 1.

We look for the inclusion of specific features that improve loading speeds:

• Nonvolatile memory express — NvME — storage: An advanced version of solid state drive or SSD storage with faster processing.
• Caching: A software that stores key data in fast-access storage layers so it can be accessed near-instantaneously by visitors’ browsers.
• Content delivery networks, or CDNs: These use a network of interconnected servers so that visitors’ browsers load your site from the server closest to them.

These tools will be noted in reviews, but won’t improve a hosting service’s ranking for loading speeds on their own; these factors will instead be put toward the value ranking. That ranking is based entirely on how quickly our test site loads.

How we test web hosting key features

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

The buying experience

We look for two things in the purchase process: simplicity and transparency. Simplicity focuses on how accessible the purchase process is and how many upsells — places where the company tries to sell you unnecessary add-ons like a Microsoft Office subscription — you need to navigate.

The primary factor in transparency is renewal pricing. Many hosts raise prices by $10 or more per month when you complete your first hosting term, and they’re not always upfront about this. Some also charge extra for essentials like a secure socket layer or SSL certificate. These additional fees will be discussed when we look at the buying 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 take a look at the host’s server and site management tool. Most hosts use cPanel as it’s affordability and easy to use. When testing these hosts, we check to make sure the cPanel is functional and not missing any key features. If a host uses an alternative solution, like the hPanel created by Hostinger, we’ll take a closer look at how easy it is to use and how it compares to cPanel.

These factors will be used to give the hosting company a key features ranking of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best and 1 being the worst.

How we assess web hosting value

Web hosting prices are complex, with a lot of caveats you need to understand before you go shopping for a hosting provider. We look at four areas of value to give you a comprehensive understanding of each host’s value.

We first consider initial pricing, as most web hosts offer a high discount for the first term if you sign up for a specific length of time. We consider what you get, how long your first term needs to be to get the best discount and whether or not you’ll incur additional fees during that time, such as a domain renewal fee in the middle of a three-year term.

Next, we examine renewal pricing. This is how much you’ll pay to keep your plan after the first term. The main thing we’re looking at here is how much the price increase diminishes the plan’s value. We’ll also consider whether any discounts are available for longer terms upon renewal.

We’ll also look at other hosting types. The main thing we’re analyzing here is how many other plans are available. This is important to consider as sites may grow to a point where they need to switch to a more advanced hosting type, and this is easier if you can stick with the same hosting company.

Finally, we’ll consider how the host compares to other options. We’ll compare its plans side-by-side with top competitors to see if they have similar features to other plans in the same price range. We’ll compare both the initial pricing and the renewal pricing.

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

How we evaluate web hosting customer service

The first area 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.

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

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

Overall assessment

Once we’ve completed our testing, we’ll combine the rankings from each testing category to create an overall rating of 1 to 10. Hosting 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 with a rating of 6 to 8 will receive recommendations for specific use cases. A hosting company with a rank of 5 or lower won’t be recommended at all.