WPshout which is one of many sites devoted to WordPress has published the results of their early 2011 survey that asked readers to review their webhosting company. The results are from 252 independent reviews. In the grand scheme of things, this is a miniscule number but it’s cool to see so many independent reviews from WordPress centric customers in one place. WPTavern is running on HostGator and so far, I don’t have anything to complain about. When I’ve needed it, support has been great. The live chat actually works and for the most part, gets my issue settles without it being escalated. Unfortunately, it looks like many people who reviewed HostGator didn’t like the performance of their site. I’m on the opposite side of the spectrum where HostGator performs very well for me out of all the previous hosting providers I’ve used.
Hostgator had 23 reviews and, impressively for such a large number, everyone rated their experience and support as “good”. A couple of people had had “some” problem with downtime, but comments gave the impression support was quick and friendly. However, a number of people had moved away from Hostgator to another host and commented that their new hosting was much faster, suggesting Hostgator’s a bit slow, just you don’t really notice when you’re hosting with them. For this reason, I’d consider the other hosts with more solid performance across the board.
It’s no surprise to me that GoDaddy ends up in last place with most of the reviewers mentioning that they switched hosts. Just as everyone has an opinion, they also have their choice of which webhosting provider to go with. Ask 100 people in a room which place should host your website and 75% of the answers will be different. With that said, you can add these independent reviews from WPShout to your list of legitimate researching material when it comes time to decide on a webhosting provider.
By the way, for those that have an opinion on which host to go with, WPShout is still conducting the survey and has plans at some point to release more detailed information regarding the reviews.
Cheers Jeff. Whilst I did take a while to put the results together, it was earlier *this* year and not 2010 that I got the results in :)