Frequently Asked Questions

• What is affiliate marketing?

  Affiliate marketing is the marketing of a product or service on behalf of a third party in exchange for commission or payout per successful sale.

• Why is my vote not showing?

  Firstly you need to make sure that you have confirmed your vote. We send out an email with a confirmation link to ensure the vote was made with a real email address, this is to ensure we limit the amount of fake / spam votes. Secondly, your vote won't show immediately — it takes a few minutes for our system to update. Rest assured, every single vote is counted unless it has been flagged as abuse from our readers.

• Does HostInsight use affiliate links?

  Yes we do. But, this is a big but! These links do not in any way affect the rankings on our website. They are merely there to help maintain HostInsight and provide the best possible service to you. Not every link is an affiliate link as many top hosts, products or services don't actually provide affiliate programs and rely on word of mouth and unbiased reviews.

• I can't find the domain I want?

  Finding a short, easy-to-remember domain is becoming more and more difficult. Fret not, you don't have to settle for some long unyielding domain! Find out how to get a short, easy-to-remember domain.

• Why are there so many review sites?

  Two words: affiliate marketing. In competitive environments affiliates get paid big bucks to promote products or services, the ones offering the most generally end up at the top of these lists. Read The Truth About Review Sites for all the details and learn what to look out for if you want to skip these websites.

• How do we rank on HostInsight?

  We use Bayesian Averages to determine the ranking order. It is a weighted algorithm, in essence the more votes there are the closer the calculated rating will go to the actual rating instead of the overall average rating. Confusing yes, but this ensures newly added hosts don't pop up right to the top just because of a few highly rated votes. Read more about Bayesian averages on Wikipedia.

• What should I check before I buy web hosting?

  Skip the top 10 lists. Write down what you are actually running, then check the renewal price, whether they will restore a backup (not just take one), how support replies when you are not a customer yet, and who owns your DNS the day you sign up. The full list is in what to check before you buy web hosting, starting with how to choose web hosting without relying on top 10 lists.

• What does 99.9% uptime actually mean?

  It sounds almost perfect until you turn it into hours. 99.9% is about 8.8 hours of downtime a year if they hit the number exactly, and most contracts exclude the outages that hurt. Ask what they measure, who measures it, and what the credit is worth before you buy on a badge. The longer version is in web hosting uptime SLAs: what 99.9% actually means.

• Who owns my email and DNS when I sign up?

  A lot of hosts park your mail and nameservers inside their account and call it everything included. That is fine until you want to leave and find the inbox and the records leave with them. Before you point anything, ask who the registrar is, whether you can change MX yourself, and what happens to mailboxes if you cancel the plan. We wrote that up in hosting email and DNS: who owns what at signup.

• How do I know I have outgrown shared hosting?

  Shared is a neighbourhood, not a promise. If checkout, login or admin starts dying while the homepage still looks fine, you are usually hitting CPU, workers or noisy neighbours, not the internet. A VPS can fix that, or it can just move the same mess onto a box you now have to babysit. Know what you are escaping before you pay for the next tier. That fork is in shared vs VPS hosting: when traffic outgrows the cheap plan.

• Who issues my SSL certificate when I sign up?

  Free SSL still sells. A lot of the time it is Let's Encrypt on their box, a Cloudflare Flexible setup that talks HTTP to the origin, or a cert that lives in their panel and dies when you leave. Before you point the domain, ask who issues it, whether they reissue it if you move, and whether the edge talks HTTPS to the origin or just pretends. The longer version is hosting SSL: who issues the cert at signup. Flexible vs Full (strict) also lives in what the host actually controls at the edge. The hostname itself is the other half: who owns email and DNS at signup.

• Is the free CDN included with hosting actually mine?

  Usually not. A lot of hosts orange-cloud you into their Cloudflare account, or they sell a page cache on the same box as a network. You cannot purge. Image URLs get rewritten onto a hostname you do not own. Ask whose zone it is, whether you can bring your own Cloudflare, and what happens to those URLs if you cancel. The longer version is hosting CDN and cache: what the host actually controls.

• What CPU, inode or PHP worker limits should I check before I buy?

  Unlimited disk still sells. The thing that knocks a site over is CPU seconds, inodes, and how many PHP workers can run at once. The pricing table never mentions those. Get the numbers in writing, and ask what happens when you hit them: throttle, suspend, or a quiet Tuesday where checkout dies and the homepage still looks fine. That check is hosting resource limits: what to check before you buy. The older framing is still what overselling means when it comes to web hosting.

• Zorbing

  The very definition of fun! Getting strapped inside a large sphere cushioned by air inside an even larger sphere and being rolled down a hill!