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.
