Why Not Introduce a Ranking System For Hosts?

[Techkid]

i would really just be carefull putting people into catagories that cause them to loose buisness ....someone will have to be accountable for this rating system if it does harm to someones buisness.....just something to think about

 

[gate2vn]

yep, that would be considered very carefully. But it also can help newbie to have deal with a good host.

anyway, always remember: there is no the best host, just the most suitable with you

 

[Jan]

A good ranking system off the top of my head.

Host #1 offers 10GB space/150GB bandwidth for $1 a month - Won't last a month.
Host #2 offers 5GB space/100GB bandwidth for $2.50 a month - Might last 2 months
Host #3 offers 1GB space/50GB bandwidth for $5 a month -Might scrape though to 6 months.
Host #4 offers 250MB space/10GB bandwidth for $10 month - likely to last for a long time.

I would go with host #4

 

[Arjun]

Host #4 offers 250MB space/10GB bandwidth for $10 month - likely to last for a long time.

I would go with host #4

its also likely tht Host # 4 wil run away with ur 10 bucks! coz you are payin him more than anyone and for less space coz usually if you are gettin it for cheap then its becos the host is doin gud business... its tricky either way and we cant pick a host by goin thru their quote and thts why this rankin system.. do chip in with ur advice ..

 

[Jan]

But I wouldn't choose a host who had been around less than a year and who didn't have a good reputation on hosting forums such at here and WHT

 

[Arjun]

About timing:
Grade A: I think it should be 1 years at least.
Grade B: > 6 months
Grade C: < 6 months

About the dedicated server: as you can order a cheap server at the moment easily, and I see some resellers are working hard to have happy customers, I think it's not required. You can have several reseller accounts with different providers. You dont have dedicated server: it doesnt mean you're not good enough. We should give chance for new hosts, if they are really good

yeah i agree too..it can be..

Group A : 1 year minimum service

Group B : atleast 3 months in service

Group c : atleast 1 month in service

Negative Grade : <needs discussion>


the idea behind giving Grade A a minimum of 1 year is to test its longitivity. And longitivity(experience) matters when it comes to handling critical situations. And our Grade A list shud be in such a way tht they have THE BEST companies, who never go down and even if they do..they provide the best alternatives and support!

Grade B shud be atleast 3 months in the hosting business..considering that there are many hosts which are between 1 year and 3 months on FWS so we shudnt be too harsh on them by putting them into Grade C..and also the competition factor comes in with many companies in Grade B

Grade C shud have essentiallu new hosts but with atleast 1 month of service. Its simple, its like a qualification mark. To enter the ranking you'l need 1 month of hosting business atleast.

Negative Grading needs to be discussed. But i wud personally suggest companies tht have been banned before and companies against whom many complains are registered frequently.

 

[Arjun]

But I wouldn't choose a host who had been around less than a year and who didn't have a good reputation on hosting forums such at here and WHT

you wud never do such a mistake but a newbie certainly wud.. :wink2:

 

[Tamranda]

Heres a little Modification to what Death Reaper said & i think it should be perfect now ...

Grade A:
1. Should Be in Buisness in atleast 1 Year.
2. Atleast 1 Dedicated Server
3. Atleast 3 Members in Support Team.
4. Reply All emails within 5 Hours.

Grade B:
1. Should be in Buisness for atleast 10 months.
2. Dedicated Server / Reseller .
3. Support Team must Consist of atleast 1 Person.
4. Reply to all emails within 10 Hours

Grade C:
1. Should be in Buisness for atleast 9 months.
2. Must have a Reseller ... Hosting on Shared Accounts won't do
3. No Support Team, Owner Provides Support !
4. Reply to all Messages within 1 Day.

Grade F -
1. High Downtimes.
2. Too good to be True Prices.
3. Over-Selling ...
4. Un-Proffesional
5. Complaints @ WHT or FWS
6. Bad Support.

 

[Arjun]

gud one..

Heres a little Modification to what Death Reaper said & i think it should be perfect now ...

Grade A:
1. Should Be in Buisness in atleast 1 Year.
2. Atleast 1 Dedicated Server
3. Atleast 3 Members in Support Team.
4. Reply All emails within 5 Hours.

Grade B:
1. Should be in Buisness for atleast 10 months.
2. Dedicated Server / Reseller .
3. Support Team must Consist of atleast 1 Person.
4. Reply to all emails within 10 Hours

Grade C:
1. Should be in Buisness for atleast 9 months.
2. Must have a Reseller ... Hosting on Shared Accounts won't do
3. No Support Team, Owner Provides Support !
4. Reply to all Messages within 1 Day.

Grade F -
1. High Downtimes.
2. Too good to be True Prices.
3. Over-Selling ...
4. Un-Proffesional
5. Complaints @ WHT or FWS
6. Bad Support.

agree with most of it..but mebe the time fator is a bit too harsh..we can keep it 1 year for Grade A .. 6 months for Grade B and 2 months for Grade C.. and no problems with the Negative Grade or Grade F..whichever

 

[Tamranda]

Well 2 months is a too short period to judge a host i think ......
Well lets see what others have to say about this ....

 

[Jeff H]

The factors you list are all fairly superficial (and difficult to measure); at this stage of planning, consumer reviews would be a far better indicator of performance. For this to work, you need to have a more meticulous review process, whether it be a meaningful set of standards (like the ISO 9000) and/or finanical review (positive cashflow? revenue trends?) and/or recording and mediation of consumer complaints (like the BBB).

Also, I would strongly encourage you to keep this a strictly voluntary "accreditation". You can get yourself into loads of trouble if you start making assumptions. Consider a customer of company X who claims that they can't get a response. You go ahead and dump this company as a Grade F company, and cause damange to the company's reputation. It turns out that this customer had a problem sending email messages through his/her ISP; and the company decides to sue you for libel and lost revenue. Granted, this would be an extreme, but when you go beyond informal consumer reviews, you have to consider how unsubstantiated or erroneous "facts" could play out. I'm not saying it can't work, but you really need to go beyond an informal survey of customers when you start to make claims like "this company takes X hours to respond to customers" or "this company has X servers" or "this company is unprofessional".

To expand a bit on my comment that your current ratings were superficial, here are a few points to consider:

+ Giving a company a bad rating because they take "X hours to respond" does not take into consideration that every company serves a different market. If a company advertises "1 hour resolution", then yes, 10 hours to respond is bad. However, if a company advertises itself as a "do-it-yourself" type arrangement with minimal support, and clearly states that non-crital issues will be replied to in 2-3 days, then you can't fairly hold them to the same standard.

+ Giving them a quality rating based on the number of customers or number of servers? Please! There's a difference between using a consumer grade white box, a high quality Dell box, enterprise class blade servers, and a high-end 100+ CPU server from SUN. Customers? Overloaded server with $1/mo accounts or high-redundancy shared services for $100/mo? Enough said.

+ Number of staff? I would certainly hope that MegaCorp has more staff than MiniBiz. I would also hope that MiniBiz isn't overstaffing their support desk while failing to invest in improved equiptment.

Anyways, you can probably see where I'm going with this. You need a more fluid set of standards that you can hold a company of any size, background, or market to. One size does NOT fit all.

Hope this feedback proves helpful in refining your plan! Let me know if I can clarify anything I said here.

 

[Jeff H]

I forgot to address one point about your rating system; that is time in business. Going along with my encouragement of using this as a voluntary accreditation, there should be a set requirement (e.g. 1 year in business, like the BBB) to participate in the review process. You can't possibly expect to be able to meaningfully review a company that has been in business for less than a year: there needs to be a track record to base the review on. To emphasize, this isn't a punishment to startups in any way.

 

[JodoHost]

A good ranking system off the top of my head.

Host #1 offers 10GB space/150GB bandwidth for $1 a month - Won't last a month.
Host #2 offers 5GB space/100GB bandwidth for $2.50 a month - Might last 2 months
Host #3 offers 1GB space/50GB bandwidth for $5 a month -Might scrape though to 6 months.
Host #4 offers 250MB space/10GB bandwidth for $10 month - likely to last for a long time.

I would go with host #4

I'd go with that too

 

[NitroZone.Net]

A ranking system would have pros and cons i think and here are a couple off the top of my head....

Pros -

1. Exposure for hosts
2. Easier for people to make hosting decisions
3. Better understanding of who's who among hosts
4. Scale of Trustability
5. Cause hosts to compete for clients by lowering prices

Cons -

1. Bias among people at FWS towards particular hosts
2. Detour hosts from buying advertising at FWS if ranking is low
3. Low ranking could reflect badly on a good web hosting company
4. Low rankings could be considered slanderous and cause legal problems
5. Host wont have opportunity to improve before damage is done to the companies reputation.

If a ranking system was put into place i think it should be hosts that submit their company to be ranked rather then being ranked without consent. Just my opinion.

 

[Jeff H]

NZN,

Overall a very good, concise summary of the arguments. However, I don't agree with Pro#5 - I think that the ranking system would encourage hosting companies NOT to compete on price alone (that's assuming that the system would emphasize quality over quantity). That's still a pro, obviously. Ever lower prices is not [necessarily] a pro, as can be evidenced in today's web hosting market.