AlreadyHosting – Web Hosting Reviews
I’m sure it’s happened to you, you wait for a bus for ages and then two turn up at once. That’s sort of happened to me with paid reviews. After mentioning in my review of HostPeek the other day that I had never reviewed a content website before, a webmaster has contacted me about a review about his hosting comparison website. What are the odds! 
The site I am reviewing today is called AlreadyHosting. The site is very similar to many hosting comparison sites in that it gives you some basic information about what hosting is and then reviews dozens of hosting companies to help you choose the right one. So does AlreadyHosting really help you choose the right host? You’ll soon find out
AlreadyHosting
I understand how the web works. People spend time building websites and creating content in order to make money. As someone who works full time through the internet, I know this better than most. And I’m sure most of you feel the same way about affiliate marketing and advertising in general as I do.
Personally I am more than happy to visit a site with advertising on it and click on the owners affiliate links if the site helps me in some way. The site might offer me great content or it may offer me a great service for free; either way I’m happy to support the site if the webmaster is doing something for me, and most of the time good information is all that I ask for.
In my review of HostPeek a few days ago I explained that all hosting comparison sites heavily advertise hosting companies however I did find the information on HostPeek incredibly useful as it showed me how the performance of several popular hosting companies, information which is good to know when choosing a host and information which is rarely found on other sites.
The web is also full of websites which offer no real content. Some of these websites do make a lot of money but they rarely provide the visitor with anything worthwhile. Unfortunately, this is the kind of website AlreadyHosting is.
Before you jump to conclusions, let me explain myself. AlreadyHosting is a web hosting review website (their words, not mine!). So the purpose of the site is to help users choose a good host.
At first glance it looks like they are actually helping users choose a host. Down the right hand side of the site are links to guides for the Best Blog Hosting, Top Green Hosting sites and Joomla Web Hosting. All of these guides are very short and link to reviews of hosting companies. A quick look on the sitemap shows that there is a whopping 77 web hosting companies reviewed on the site.
Unfortunately, I need to use the term ‘review’ lightly. Clearly, with so many hosting sites it is unlikely that the writers have used every single one. That is not something I have an issue with. However, many of the reviews contain so little information that I feel I would offend my dictionary if I actually labelled them a review.
Check out their iPage Review to see what I mean. iPage is a hosting site which has managed to make it to number 9 of their top 10 web hosts list of 2009, and with 77 hosting sites being reviewed, you would expect the site to have impressed them a lot. This seems to be the case with 4 out of 5 stars and a host rating of 90% (how they award this is beyond me).
For those who didn’t click on the link mentioned above, here’s a screenshot of the review page:
So basically the review of iPage is a sentence stating that the web hosting site is ‘recognized as a top web hosting provider by AlreadyHosting.com’. Mmmm, I don’t know about you but that doesn’t exactly help me in choosing a host. There is of course more information on the review page.
Underneath the ‘review’ is a box showing you the price per month to host there. It doesn’t tell you whether this is for a shared hosting package, reseller package or dedicated server. Maybe half the fun is guessing what package $3.50 a month gets you!!
Underneath the ‘info box’ is a section entitled ‘About iPage‘. This is the content which is within this section.
Small business web hosting offering additional business services such as: domain name registrations, email accounts, web services, FrontPage help, online community resources and various small business solutions.
Mmmm. That doesn’t sound too specific does it?
Underneath that section is the ‘Research iPage‘ area, which shows you the Alexa and Compete traffic rankings for the site. This is probably the most useful information on the whole page. Ironically, they didn’t provide it.
After that is another reminder that the site was recognised as a top hosting service and after that is a link to an about page for the site and the whois information.
Unfortunately, this review isn’t a one off. Most of the reviews on the site contain as little information as the iPage review I just spoke about above. I would have much preferred if the owner had just chosen 10 web hosting sites and reviewed them thoroughly rather than writing 77 reviews that tell you nothing about the hosting site. Some of the reviews are a little longer but it’s difficult to know how reliable any information in the reviews is when the majority of them are rushed.
AlreadyHosting also has a blog. This section really baffled me as it actually contains some good articles. Why didn’t they put the same effort into their main site?
Overview
Let’s look at AlreadyHosting for what it is, a site which was setup to generate affiliate commissions from people who are choosing a new host. As I mentioned before, I have no issues with people placing advertising or affiliate links on their site if they provide good content, but unfortunately AlreadyHosting does not.
From their poor uninformative reviews to their spammy automated link exchange page, the whole site offers nothing to anyone who is looking for a new host. I’m sure the owner is a nice enough person and if they are making money with this site, good luck to them. Though I would advise you all to avoid this site at all costs as it won’t give you any help in choosing a web host.
Link: AlreadyHosting
* This was a Paid Review. If you are interested in having your site reviewed on Blogging Tips, please check out our Advertising Information Page.
Written by Kevin Muldoon from WordPress ModsPosted on December 1st, 2009 and filed under Domain Names & Hosting
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13 Responses to “AlreadyHosting – Web Hosting Reviews”
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Kevin, I think you’ve been saving these reviews up!
These comparison sites do help people find good deals. I know I’ve used ones before to save money on my phone, electric & gas bills.
Wow, what a review! I think your review is COMPLETELY false and proves that you do not fully research your articles. IN FACT, our site is full of great content ( http://www.alreadyhosting.com/blog/ ) … Just check out some of the posts below… We hired an article writer and told them their sole job was to write honest articles that informed our users, none of his articles are written in a way to make a sale but solely to inform.
As for our web hosting reviews! Unlike most sites our “rankings” and “reviews” are not in the order of highest commission. If fact, the sites that we advertise at the top pay far less commission than other hosting providers on our site. We feel that honesty is the best practice and we host our own website with the site that we promote as #1. We have credibility in the market because we have stuck to the principle of customer FIRST. Yes, we do make money on commission (that is obvious), but there is nothing wrong with that as long as we are providing a great service (Which I and many others believe we are).
Furthermore, you approached me about getting a blog post on your site… So your blog post is a lie in saying that I approached you, this looks like a complete setup to me.
AlreadyHosting.com
Hello.
I got your blog post when searching for relatively cheap webhost.
I would like to ask what is your opinion about WebHostingPad ( http://www.webhostingpad.com/3868.html ). How would you access it?
Its price is usually $3.95/month, but we get a low $1.99/month if we subscribe for 3 years.
They offer UNLIMITED hosting space, bandwidth, domains, emails, database, FTP accesses and subdomains, as well as a free domain name and the Fantastico platform.
Thanks in advance for your response.
I’ve never heard of them Kevin. Though you should know that there is no such thing as unlimited webspace and bandwidth. Check out my Choosing a webhost e-book to find out more.
Jonathan – I do research all of my articles. I don’t think I could have written over 1,000 words if I didn’t.
First off, I didn’t contact you. An ad agency contacted me and said that they represented you and sent me money for a review. I had never come across you or your website before that. And I had no reason to assume that you hadn’t read my advertising page or my note in my paid review page that stressed that reviews cannot be guaranteed.
With regards to your blog, I agree that there are some great articles on it, and I said as much in my review.
With regards to your reviews. I need to disagree. The majority of them cannot even be considered a review as they contain very little information about the site and their policies.
As I said, I have no problem if this site was just built to make money on the web. Though it’s not something I would recommend to my visitors. I will contact the ad agency in question as clearly there is a breakdown in communication here.
Every review page has an opportunity for users to review the hosts (which most hosting review sites don’t allow – including the HostPeek site that you stated was good).
Further more this is the email I received:
“Hello there, I’m William from BloggingTips.com, A popular blogging niche blog with 180,000 UV, 800,000 PV per month & 7900 daily RSS readers. We found AlreadyHosting interesting and we would like to share it with our readers. We did love to make a 1000 word article covering everything about it with do-follow links back to your site. Review stays on blog for life time and it costs just $300. Hope you did like to introduce AlreadyHosting to 180,000 Bloggers at one place. Thanks, William BloggingTips.com”
Now, I am in the processes of branding my website and I thought a review could be helpful, who would have guessed that a company WHO CONTACTED ME, would write a negative review… YOU CONTACTED ME… AND THEN in your article you claimed that I contacted you, which proves your lack of research.
SHAMEFUL…
P.S. To state that HostPeek.com provides a more useful resource than AlreadyHosting.com is laughable. We have helped thousands of people find a web hosting provider throughout the years. A “Web Hosting Review” site should be based on user experiences… And THAT is exactly why our review pages are set up the way they are.
No one called William works or has ever worked for BloggingTips. Infact, I don’t know anyone called William online or in real life.
Clearly this person was out of line saying that he represented BloggingTips because he doesn’t. If anyone did work for me their name would be in the BloggingTips staff area.
This whole process has made me realise that taking reviews via ad agencies is not in my interests. Therefore I will not use them again and will only deal with webmasters who want reviews directly.
This whole thing confused the hell out of me because I haven’t dealt with anyone called William. The person at the ad agency who I was dealing with was called Chris. I emailed Chris and told him that I was unhappy with what has happened and explained that they need to be more transparent about how they do business.
His reply explained the following. This guy William works with a company called DesignBlogMedia. He contacted the guy I know, Chris from MakeIdeaz, and explained that he had a review. Obviously I was really pissed off with this situation because
* Advertisers were not being told that their reviews would be positive, when I do not guarantee such a thing.
* Advertisers were being told that I would use certain keywords to link to their site, when I don’t do such a thing.
* 2 people were getting a commission before I was getting paid. I am obviously aware of the fact that any ad agency takes a cut and I happy with this because it’s money I wouldn’t have made if they didn’t match me with the advertiser. But 2 people getting paid before I do is a joke. God knows that they charged advertisers.
I have learned that Kevin was not responsible for the misunderstandings here, an individual named William wrote me an email clearly stating he was with BloggingTips. You have to understand that I was just as confused about the situation as you.
So I apologize to Kevin for blaming him for the situation when this was not entirely his fault, although I still disagree with the review.
God Speed.
Thanks for clarifying Jonathan. No hard feelings.
All the best
:)
Kevin
Jonathan,
Stop treating us like bunch of idiots who do not know how the Internet business world runs. We all knew AlreadyHosting.com is nothing more than an affiliate-oriented site with little-to-none truthful content. And with the kind of search engine exposures you are getting, you’re most probably making tons of good money from it (after all web hosts pay $100+ for a sale). So why just give us a break and just let Kevin tells us his real opinion?
And about your statement:
“We have helped thousands of people find a web hosting provider..”
Excuse me? HELP? You tell me putting up those pieces of junky-review with tons of fake customer feedbacks a help? Dude, you are simply making money because majority of the Internet shoppers are not skeptical enough.
Please, just shut up and stop making yourself like a clown.
And about your statement:
“We have helped thousands of people find a web hosting provider..”
Excuse me? HELP? You tell me putting up those pieces of junky-review with tons of fake customer feedbacks a help? Dude, you are simply making money because majority of the Internet shoppers are not skeptical enough
xcuse me? HELP? You tell me putting up those pieces of junky-review with tons of fake customer feedbacks a help? Dude, you are simply making money because majority of the Internet shoppers are not skeptical enough