How is that hostcompare is hosted by
interland, and everyone says interland
sucks!

Because HostCompare, and other 'top-ranking' sites out there are absolutely crap.

If you have a look at this URL : http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000316.html (which is another topic in this forum) you'll see Annette's explanation.

Myself did signup my personal account at HostMatters.com by Annette, very impressed and nice features. That is why I want my own server with Alabanza, soon I will :)

They are good in some ways!

That's a fact, (about host ranking sites being full of you know what). I actually confirmed that in discussion with someone a bit over a year ago. After the bad treatment I received from AIT, I wanted to let the world know about it. I was aware of several sites that rate hosts and I e-mailed everybody in connection with them, especially all the reviewers I could find. I was beginning to suspect the ratings of some companies, but didn't know for sure they were paid for.

I only heard back from one person (which didn't surprise me when I learned what I did), and we spoke on the phone. He was no longer with the company I had e-mailed, and he told me that ratings at most of these companies were paid for with advertising.

He told me a bunch of other things, including the fact that most of these rating companies were owned by hosting companies (gee, imagine that) and that even if they didn't rate their host company, they would have a reciprocal arrangement with a similar fraudulent rating company. In other words "you rate my company highly, and I'll do the same for yours".

It's an industry wide collusion and scam to divert traffic to some terrible companies by making them look much better than they are. There is no irony involved here, just lies, deceit, fraudulence and the like.

It's no wonder so many people get abused by at least one company. Unless you think to look for sites like this one, and find them, you may at least somewhat believe taht a company will do what it says and treat you properly, like they want your business ad infinitum. Once you find out they don't and that many lie, you learn to be more cautious, less trusting and seek out reliable resources for assessing the reliability of a host. It can be a time consuming, even lengthy, search to find a reputable host and it's worth every minute and hour it takes.

[This message has been edited by Duster (edited 06-28-2000).]

Just to let you guys know, whether you believe it or not is upto you, our 'approved hosts' are not paid for by sponsors or sold to sponsors, although this is what some people think when a sponsor is also an approved host or when we don't spend 24/7 scrolling newsgroups for bad reviews of approved hosts. We're soon to scrap to appproved hosts section soon anyway since hosts good from good to bad so quickly and it's hard to get up with all the good hosts, not to mention all the hassle we get when we refer to host that the customer has a negative experience with. This was one of the main reason why we started webhostingtalk.com and scrapped the Host Investigator forum with ads.

There is soon truth in Duster posts I been told about some of the bigger host directory, who there owned and what there advertising restriction are or not in the cases, although I would not tell since it can't be proved and the people who told me would never back me up.

You folks are the best,

so far everything I have read has come across as some honest answers

and this board, (thank you admin dude)

is really helping me narrow it down

so how reliable is the net mechanic service

Originally posted by krystal:
You folks are the best,

so far everything I have read has come across as some honest answers

and this board, (thank you admin dude)

is really helping me narrow it down

so how reliable is the net mechanic service


They have a freebie trial where they will test your site over a period of time and then send you a report via email. Somebody was testing this - BC, do you remember where that was?


------------------
Annette
Hosting Matters, Inc.
http://www.hostmatters.com

I would recommend Net Mechanics. Small cost and I never noticed them to not be accurate.

------------------
PCISD, Inc
www.pcisd.com

http://www.netmechanics.com/monitor.htm

Here is the URL where you can find the free sample.

------------------
PCISD, Inc
30 Days Free http://www.pcisd.com (http://one.pcisd.com:4000/index.cgi?HIForum)

Also, netwhistle.com will monitor up to 5 sites once an hour for free. Past that (more sites) or more often will cost ya'.

It opened my eyes.

Annette and Krystal,

PCISD has the correct URL - thanks PCISD.

I also highly recommend Netwhistle - it may only be hourly, but it's good enough to catch major periods of downtimes et. al. And of course, it has the best price - it's free.

Netwhistle is pretty good, although I would recommend attempting to verify the reports that it gives, if that is possible, soon after receiving a report of a resource failure (and Netwhistle recommends this as well).

BC, I thought someone was actually testing out Net Mechanic's report results somewhere in these forums, but I don't remember who or where that was. I do seem to recall that you were responding to that one, although I could be mistaken. Since I can't remember where that was in the first place, it's probable. :)

------------------
Annette
Hosting Matters, Inc.
http://www.hostmatters.com

Annette,

I think you were referring to Tom's case over in the Tips-Tricks forum. I'm currently helping him out :) His host is somewhat unusual.... (since he would like some confidentiality, all I'll say is that his host places an unusually high emphasis on security, which is quite good!)

Another site for web site tools is Website Garage. Netscape bought them last year (but don't hold that against them) The URL is http://websitegarage.netscape.com/

They are similar to Net Mechanics and also have free services.