How we compare hosting

Last updated 2026-06-17.

Most hosting "top 10" pages hide two things: the renewal price, and the fact that nobody actually tested anything. We do the opposite — we're transparent about exactly what our comparison is, and what it isn't.

What our comparison is based on

Every figure on HostArbiter — prices, visit limits, storage, features, money-back windows, affiliate terms — is taken from each provider's own published pricing and feature pages, and dated. We record the source URLs and a last verified date for each host (currently 2026-06-17) and re-check them on a schedule. Prices change often, so we always show the intro price and the renewal price, and we tell you to confirm the live price on the provider's site before buying.

What it is not

We do not run synthetic speed benchmarks, load tests or uptime monitoring, and we do not host live test sites on every provider. Plenty of sites claim "we tested" without evidence; we'd rather be honest that our edge is rigorous, sourced, up-to-date specification analysis — not invented numbers. Where independent performance data matters to you, we say so and point you to the provider's own published guarantees (such as uptime SLAs).

How the recommender scores hosts

Our interactive selector turns your inputs (project type, traffic, budget, support needs, managed preference) into a ranking. It combines the verified entry price from our dataset with transparent, editorial capability scores we assign to each host from its published specs:

Performance — infrastructure quality, caching and CDN, on paper.
Ease — how hands-off and beginner-friendly the platform is.
Support — depth and availability of the support offering.
WooCommerce fit and agency fit — suitability for stores and for managing many client sites.
Scale ceiling — the traffic the plan ladder comfortably covers.

These capability scores are judgements, not lab measurements — that's why we publish them here. Budget and traffic fit use the real numbers from the dataset. The result is deterministic: the same inputs always produce the same ranking.

How we stay independent

HostArbiter earns affiliate commissions from some hosts (see our affiliate disclosure). Commissions never influence scores or rankings, which are set by the criteria above. We include hosts that pay us nothing where relevant, and we say plainly who each host is wrong for.

Our sources

The dataset behind this site draws on official provider pages, including: