---
title: "How We Test & Score Hosting Providers | Digital Hosting"
url: https://digitalhosting.com/how-we-test
description: "Our full review methodology: the scoring rubric, how prices are verified and dated, what 'tested' does and doesn't mean on this site, and how affiliate links are handled."
lang: en
---

Methodology

# How we test and score hosting providers

Every score, price, and recommendation on this site follows the process below. Where we haven't done something — like load-testing a specific provider — we say so on the page rather than implying we did.

Last updated: August 8, 2026

## The scoring rubric

Providers are scored on five weighted criteria. Weights are tuned per category (support weighs more for beginner shared hosting; performance weighs more for VPS), but the default split is:

Performance

35%

TTFB, regional latency, scaling headroom — from published specs, provider documentation, and independent public benchmarks.

Price clarity

25%

Renewal honesty, add-on cost surface, and whether the advertised price survives year two.

Support

20%

Channels offered, documented response targets, and independent customer reports.

Reliability

15%

Documented uptime SLAs and status-page transparency.

Migration

5%

Path in, path out, and lock-in surface.

## How prices are verified

Every dollar figure on this site carries a verification date. A price is only published after we've checked it on the vendor's own pricing page (or the vendor's official documentation, or a same-day price tracker for the handful of vendors that block automated access). We record both the advertised entry price _and_ the renewal price, because the gap between the two is the single most common hosting-billing surprise. Providers we haven't verified yet are labeled "Not yet price-verified" — we never fill the gap with a guess. Prices are re-verified on a quarterly rotation; the current pass is dated July 9, 2026.

## What "tested" means here — honestly

Our reviews are desk-research driven: vendor documentation, published plan specifications, service-level agreements, status-page history, independent public benchmarks, and long-running community consensus (forums like LowEndTalk and r/webhosting, where actual customers report problems). No page on this site claims a benchmark we didn't run. As of August 2026 we also run our own continuous measurement: the Digital Hosting Uptime Study (https://digitalhosting.com/uptime-study) checks the study's frozen 37-provider cohort every five minutes from four continents, with results publishing from September 2026. We do not yet publish our own load-test numbers; provider pages without hands-on testing say so.

## Who runs this site

Digital Hosting is owned and operated by TetraCore in Ohio. Content is written and maintained by the Digital Hosting editorial team; we don't publish invented author personas or stock-photo bylines. Corrections and challenges to any claim are welcome via the contact page (https://digitalhosting.com/contact) — if we got a price or fact wrong, we'll fix it and note the change.

## How affiliate links work

Some outbound links are affiliate links: if you buy through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Two things keep that honest. First, rankings and scores are set before monetization is considered — several of our top picks (Hetzner, Migadu, Cloudflare Registrar among them) pay us nothing. Second, providers whose affiliate program we haven't joined still get a working link straight to their public pricing page, labeled "See current pricing" rather than a deal we can't offer. The full policy is on the affiliate disclosure (https://digitalhosting.com/affiliate-disclosure) page.

## What we don't do

- No sponsored placements — position on a page can't be bought.
- No invented ratings, user-review counts, or aggregate scores.
- No prices without a verification date attached.
- No "fastest host" claims without a published benchmark behind them.

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