How We Rank Hosting Providers

Our comparisons are designed to answer one question: which host fits your project best? Here is how we collect data, score providers and keep our pages up to date.

Where our data comes from

• Official sources. We take prices, plan specs, data center locations, refund terms and support details from each provider's own website: pricing pages, plan pages, terms of service and help centers.
• Dated checks. Every provider record stores the date it was last checked.
• One source of truth. Each provider's prices and specs are stored in one place. Comparison pages display them from that record rather than repeating numbers in the text, so when a price changes, every page updates at once.
• When sources disagree. If a provider's own pages contradict each other, we use the more conservative reading or leave the field blank rather than guess.

How we score providers

Each provider gets a score from 0 to 10 based on the criteria that matter for the category:

• Performance: CPU generation, storage type (NVMe or SSD) and network.
• Reliability: infrastructure, backups and uptime commitments.
• Support: available channels, hours and the depth of help offered.
• Features: what matters for the use case, such as modpack installers and DDoS protection for game servers, root access for VPS, or staging and managed updates for WordPress.
• Ease of use: control panel, setup and migrations.
• Value: what you get for the price, including renewal prices and refund terms.

Weights differ by category. For Minecraft hosting, for example, we weight performance at 25%, reliability and support at 20% each, modded server support at 15%, and ease of use and value at 10% each.

A provider can have a different score on different pages when its strengths fit one use case better than another. Final rankings are an editorial decision informed by these scores.

How we show prices

• Prices are in US dollars where available and exclude taxes.
• The starting price is the price of the cheapest plan. Depending on the category, we show the month-to-month price or the lowest advertised price; when a plan costs more after the first term, we show the renewal price as well.
• Some starting prices reflect promotions that were available when we checked. Always confirm the final price at checkout.

How we keep pages up to date

We re-check providers regularly and whenever we learn about a change. If you spot something outdated, please let us know.

Commercial relationships

Some links on our site may earn us a commission. Read our advertiser disclosure and editorial policy to learn how this works.