Once upon a time, you could read a review of a product or service and take it as a more or less genuine opinion of the service. In this age of self-publishing, there’s nothing to stop anyone posting a review whether it’s good, bad, or neutral. Some of these reviews are published in the interest of making money, and the review process is merely a ruse to edge you into buying a product. In this article, we’ll discuss the different pitfalls of trusting web hosting reviews too much.

The Horrible Review

If you see an absolutely horrible review of a hosting service, it may very well be a horrible service. Another possibility is that the service is normally good to adequate, but one user somehow fell through the cracks and had a bad experience, so their review is biased against the hosting company. If you see a review like that, you should certainly take it into account.

Since anyone can publish a review, it’s also possible that a competing company will go to great lengths to give negative reviews to everyone else. It’s far from unheard of to hire people to do a smear campaign and drum up business for the ”better” service.

The Incredible Review

An extremely good review could be from a very happy client that got exactly what he or she wanted from the hosting service. That’s a great thing, and you should investigate that service. Another possibility is that the company itself is posting that review, and it’s a very common occurrence. Some companies will hire an entire staff to go around the web and post great reviews of the hosting service. Of course, it’s difficult to tell whether or not it’s a legitimate reviewer or not, so take exceptional reviews with a grain of salt.

The Hosting Review Websites

Some websites are dedicated to web hosting reviews, and they usually feature anywhere from 1 to 100 web hosting companies along with a blurb and link to the company. There’s two possibilities when you run into these sites. The first and almost entirely unlikely possibility is that someone reviewed 100 web hosting companies, wrote honest reviews of them, and out of the goodness of their heart decided to publish it for you to see. Few people have that much free time, and they would probably spend it doing something other than that.

The second type of site is a links-for-pay site. Someone puts up a ”hosting review website” and will of course give a good review to the different hosting companies. Usually, these reviews are directly correlated to how much the hosting company is paying the site owner for the referral link. This type of site is the most common, and it will tell you very little about the actual quality of service.

The face of reviewing has changed on the internet, so regardless of what a web hosting review says, investigate the service itself because the review is most likely bunk.