Every so often people come in and complain about the webhost they are using; often the hosts they complain about are exactly the same hosts as the majority of people on this board highly recommend.

Perhaps it would be useful to create a forum specifically for polls of the form "Is XYZ webhosting Inc. good?", with the options being "I've used them and I'm happy with them" and "I've used them and I'm not happy with them". I know that when such has been attempted on other websites it has fallen prey to ballot-stuffing, but here, where you must register as a user in order to vote, it might well work.

I think this would both be useful for people who come in looking for advice on webhosts (they could quickly see *****'s reputation, for example), as well as benefitting the hosting companies who have many happy customers yet have their reputation tarnished by one unhappy customer.

Opinions?

Sounds like a good idea!

Agreed! :D

Originally posted by cperciva
Every so often people come in and complain about the webhost they are using; often the hosts they complain about are exactly the same hosts as the majority of people on this board highly recommend.

Perhaps it would be useful to create a forum specifically for polls of the form "Is XYZ webhosting Inc. good?", with the options being "I've used them and I'm happy with them" and "I've used them and I'm not happy with them". I know that when such has been attempted on other websites it has fallen prey to ballot-stuffing, but here, where you must register as a user in order to vote, it might well work.

I think this would both be useful for people who come in looking for advice on webhosts (they could quickly see *****'s reputation, for example), as well as benefitting the hosting companies who have many happy customers yet have their reputation tarnished by one unhappy customer.

Opinions?

Polls don't tell anybody anything useful. Details do. There are so many facets to hosting that one must know the expectations of the reviewer, and their needs, in order to properly assess any potential host. After all, even ***** has a few people who speak positively of them.

Some people will make assumptions and then speak poorly of a host that does not conform to those assumptions. We've seen many people here who don't know the first thing about hosting and expect the hosting company to teach them.

Most people have simple sites with a few HTML pages, make few changes, use little bandwidth, and will be happy with almost any host. Others have greater needs. These are the ones more likely to discover the faults in any host.

A drawback to one person may be of no consequence to others. For instance, one person may have assumed backups were included and speak poorly of a host when they found that their assumption was not true. For someone else that does their own backups or has no need of them, that same host might be well suited.

There are many other reasons why a poll is of no value whatsoever. It can be unfair to the companies by unfairly characterizing them and serves no value to those looking for a host either.

Many things do not have simple answers. Life is usually more complex, as is the truth.

Well, I don't know why we'd need a forum for this (specifically), but polls asking, "Is this host good: yes/no" I find to be useless, as one host will not be good for everyone for many reasons. I'm personally not typing in every host and starting these polls, and even if you did, someone would inevitably start another one, failing to search for one already started. In all, maybe I just don't get the purpose 100%.

I tend to agree with Chicken. One needs the feedback of others experience on what to avoid or what to try. Each person has different needs for what they want for their stuff. Not to mention, I believe the earlier comment was most polls are stuffed, and it wouldn't be here....One can register under different names if they really wanted that host to get the good yes's. I'm sorry I just don't think it would be worth the effort or time. A lot more creative things to be doing.

Isn't the idea sounds more like a ;

Web-Host Reviews/Comments
Forum for discussing, complaining, praising, criticising, or asking for enquiries of a/any web hosting company, including spreading of all possible rumors they had.


:rolleyes:

I agree with the people saying that comments are necessary; however I still think that such a forum would be useful.

Why? Because if someone wanders in here looking for opinions on XYZ webhosting they're going to see the complaints and not the praise. I don't know if I've ever seen a thread entitled "XYZ webhosting is really great", yet I've seen threads dedicated to bashing some of the hosts which most people here highly recommend.

However it is done, I think it is important that there be some place where people express their satisfaction with hosts as well as their dissatisfaction; otherwise one gives the impression that all web hosts are bad.

While it is easy after being here for 6 months to recognize the isolated complaints against some companies as isolated complaints, it would be much easier if one could simply look up "out of 15 people here who have signed up with XYZ webhosting only 1 has been unhappy".

Theer are plenty of posts praising companies. Many of them lack value also as they are made by people who have just signed up with a company or others who have a very short time with their present host. Many problems won't surface until later. That renders their praise without value as their hosting has not met the test of time.

Also, hosts can change their service over time for various reasons. Even a good host can experience problems. For instance, they might have a spurt of growth, not have enough support personnel, and service may deteriorate for awhile until they can hire and train enough new people. It might once again rise to its former level. The results of a poll would not indicate that and would continue to show past problems.

There are many areas where polls an give an idea of what to expect, areas where there is not a big variance in the needs of its customers. Hosting, however, is not one of those areas and such pollls are a disservice to the company as well as to those it is intended to help.

Simple minds look for simple answers. Life is seldom that simple.

Hmm..

Given recent experiences on this one I'd say my own opinion is that of the majority here (me? peer pressure? ;) )

Once you get burned by a host you tend to find yourself doing a full on check of any future host by looking at all the posts on this and other forums... Looking for other customers, etc...

Some people come in and just browse quickly to see what the general "feel" is... whilst others take their time and read the posts, follow them and ask questions when not sure.

To a certain extent you can get burned by either method but as with anything else the odds are that the more time you put in the more you'll get out.

So bottom line, if you wanted to do anything that provides potential customers with the whole picture and does the hosts justice you'd need to put together a host review site. With loads of info giving both sides of the story. Sections for long term customers opinions/experiences, the good, the bad. Details of outages/opinions over a timeline, etc... That's a lot of work and whilst it'd be helpful it's not like you'd get paid for it.

Just my 10penneth worth...

Maybe a forum on what to look for besides price?
What questions to ask, what the answers *really* mean. (100% uptime can mean the power never goes out! Actually heard it once.)

Unlimited Bandwidth = "I am praying they don't use it all at once."
Unlimited Space = "I have 3 60 GB disks - they'll never fill that up!"
4U Colo for $29.00/mo. = "I have a DSL line with 5 IP's - why not?"


After hanging out here for a really short while we have decided not to go into dedicated servers, mainly because of the expectation level of what appear to be average customers.
No way I can provide our typical level of service and compete at these prices.

I truly believe education is the answer to a lot of the problems I've seen over and over.

My .02
Tom