How we test and rank web hosting

Pricing data

We record every plan's advertised intro price, the prepaid term it requires, and the renewal price from the host's pricing pages, terms of service and renewal notices. Prices are in USD per month and re-checked regularly; plans marked re-check are being re-verified.

3-year cost

3-year cost = intro price × intro term (up to 36 months) + renewal price × remaining months. It's the fairest single number for comparing a cheap-then-expensive plan with a flat-price one.

"Comfortable up to" visits

Hosts rarely publish hard traffic limits. Our estimate is the monthly visits a typical cached WordPress site can handle on that plan's resources before you'd want to upgrade. For stores we assume 1.6x the load, because carts and checkouts can't be fully cached.

How the Matcher ranks plans

Filter: remove plans that can't handle your sites, traffic (12-month target), platform, budget or required access.
Score: right-sized capacity, a data center near your visitors, your must-have features, store safeguards (daily backups), skill fit, and price stability.
Value: lower 3-year cost scores higher.
Diversity: we show at most one plan per host.

Commissions are not an input. The code that ranks plans has no access to affiliate data.

How we review refund policies

We read each host's full Cancellation & Refunds Policy, not just the "money-back guarantee" banner. We record the refund window, which billing terms qualify, and every exclusion: multi-year plans, promotional purchases, payment methods, domain fees, add-ons and process conditions. We note the policy's own revision date and the date we checked it, and the Matcher warns you when the cheapest price for a plan isn't refundable.

How the hosting checker works

We resolve the domain's DNS records, identify the network that owns its IP address (via public ASN registries), reverse-lookup the server hostname, read HTTP headers and scan the page source. We name a host only when a signal supports it, and we show you which one. When a CDN such as Cloudflare hides the origin server, we say so instead of guessing.