Hello, and welcome to HostPeek! I present to you my web hosting comparisons site, that can help you in ways that no other site can. I know that time is always in short supply, and this introductory page shouldn't take you more than a couple of minutes to read.

The rankings

Overall Rankings Rank Host Ranking average #1 HostGator 1.33 #2 1and1 1.67 #4 Justhost 5.00 #3 HostMonster 5.33 #7 Lunarpages 5.67 #6 Dreamhost 5.67 #5 Godaddy 6.33 #7 Hostpapa 8.00 #7 Fatcow 9.33 #7 IXwebhosting 9.33 #7 Ipage 9.67 #7 Netfirms 10.67

Server uptime records* Rank Host Uptime #1 HostGator 99.97% #2 1and1 99.97% #3 Godaddy 99.91% #4 Justhost 99.91% #5 Lunarpages 99.91% #6 HostMonster 99.85% #7 Dreamhost 99.84% #8 Fatcow 99.78% #9 Netfirms 99.7% #10 Hostpapa 99.56% #11 IXwebhosting 98.29% #12 Ipage 95.98%

Server performance records** Rank Host Avg. time #1 HostGator 405.4ms #2 1and1 418.9ms #3 Hostpapa 669.9ms #4 Justhost 695.3ms #5 Dreamhost 758.2ms #6 Lunarpages 879.7ms #7 HostMonster 1342ms #8 Ipage 1395ms #9 IXwebhosting 1427ms #10 Fatcow 2203ms #11 Netfirms 2237ms #12 Godaddy 2557ms

Network test records*** Rank Host Rate #1 1and1 539.7KB/s #2 HostGator 508.5KB/s #3 HostMonster 458.3KB/s #4 Godaddy 408.8KB/s #5 Dreamhost 403.8KB/s #6 Lunarpages 396.7KB/s #7 Justhost 349.6KB/s #8 IXwebhosting 317.8KB/s #9 Ipage 300.6KB/s #10 Fatcow 218.0KB/s #11 Hostpapa 203.1KB/s #12 Netfirms 172.65KB/s

*      As proved by Pingdom based reports. The higher the value, the better.
**    Calculated as the average of applications run times (joomla, phpbb, wordpress). The lower the value, the better.
***   Calculated as an average of the bimonthly download speed tests. The higher the value, the better.
---- All are based on the available data (11 to 22 months, depending on the host). Check the charts and figures pages to find detailed, up-to-date information.

The hosts

As you've probably already noticed, the hosts presented on this site are some of the most widely known so called best web hosting providers, with some of the largest customer bases, and equally sized marketing budgets. If you've been looking for hosting you've probably heard about some of them already, maybe you've even seen their ads on TV. But how does that high visibility translate into service quality? Do their promises have anything to do with the reality of facts? How do their services compare to each another? 

The site

I've created Hostpeek.com to answer those questions with real data rather than hype. If you're tired of the hundreds of "top hosts" websites that publish fake, inaccurate, uninformative, random looking, unverifiable or intentionally misleading web hosting rankings, or tired of sites that only try to sell you a hosting service and provide you with information that was simply copied from the hosts' websites, you'll be glad to see that HostPeek.com is totally different. It allows you to actually take a peek at hosting companies' services, revealing servers' evolution over time.

Essentially, it's as if you had tried all these hosts yourself and now you're looking back at the results, because what I do is sign-up for an account with each hosting company as an inconspicuous customer. Then, with the help of monitoring software and services, I measure how fast some of the popular applications run on their servers (a blog, a content management system and a forum), keep track of various pertinent variables, monitor uptime etc. 

The details

You can access very detailed information about each host using the links in the "Charts and figures" menu, so that you can make your own judgments. Also, for your convenience, a set of rankings and average figures is presented on this very page, and updated monthly. It will help you make some easy, fast comparisons.

The Guide and FAQs articles provide detailed answers and instructions on how all of the data should be interpreted. In them you'll even find some self-critiques on the project. Yes, I don't claim perfection. Perfection is merely an ideal, thus my advice to you is to be reasonable. Be a realist. That's exactly what's presented on this site: reality, as it is being experienced on a regular customer account, at a number of hosts.

Helping out

If you like the site, you can help the site survive and grow by spreading the word about it. Please mention it in your blog or tweeter, link to it, or even just mention it to a friend who might need it. Also, don't forget there's a comments section at the end of the articles where you can add your own short review etc.

Thank you, and good luck finding the right host for your needs! I sincerely hope that Hostpeek.com will be of real use to you!