Affiliate Disclosure
BestHosting.reviews earns revenue through affiliate marketing. This page explains in full how affiliate relationships work on this site, what they mean for you as a reader, and the specific measures we take to ensure that commercial relationships never compromise the honesty of our reviews.
We believe you deserve to understand exactly how this site makes money before you trust our recommendations.
1. What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based commercial arrangement between a publisher (us) and a merchant (hosting providers). When you click a "Visit site" or "Get started" button on this site, you are sent through a tracking link. If you subsequently purchase a hosting plan within a defined tracking window, the hosting provider pays us a commission — typically a flat fee per sale or a percentage of the first payment.
The commission is paid entirely by the hosting provider. It does not add anything to the price you pay. You would pay exactly the same price whether you arrived at the provider's site via our link or directly.
2. Which Providers Have Affiliate Agreements with Us?
Most of the major hosting providers we review operate public affiliate programs and have such agreements with us. These typically include providers like Hostinger, SiteGround, Namecheap, InMotion, DreamHost, Bluehost, and others.
A smaller number of providers we cover do not currently have affiliate programs or do not have an active agreement with us — we review them anyway because honest coverage of the market is more valuable to our readers than limiting ourselves to monetised providers.
The presence or absence of an affiliate agreement does not determine:
- Whether a provider appears on this site
- Where a provider ranks on any listing or comparison page
- Whether a provider receives a positive or negative review
- What score a provider receives in our scoring system
3. How We Ensure Commissions Do Not Influence Rankings
This is the most important section on this page. Here is the specific mechanism that keeps affiliate income separate from editorial outcomes.
3.1 Computed, Transparent Scores
Every provider on this site receives a score computed automatically from five independently measured dimensions:
- Overall rating (30%): An editorial rating based on hands-on testing, support quality, and performance benchmarks
- Price value (20%): Promotional and renewal pricing relative to what you get — expensive plans that are genuinely worth it score well; cheap plans that underdeliver do not
- Account resource limits (25%): The actual documented limits on inodes, CPU seconds, entry processes, email volume, and other resources — providers who hide these limits receive a scoring penalty
- Included features (15%): Free SSL, daily backups, free domain, cPanel, free migration, and similar value-adds
- Data transparency (10%): Whether the provider discloses their technical limits clearly and honestly in their documentation
The commission rate a provider offers us is not one of the five scoring inputs. It is not considered at any stage of the scoring or ranking process.
The full methodology — including the exact formula, normalisation approach, and the penalties applied for undisclosed limits — is published on our Methodology page. We publish it in full so that anyone can evaluate whether our scores are credible.
3.2 What This Means in Practice
A provider with a generous affiliate commission who scores poorly on resource limits, pricing value, and transparency will rank below a provider with no affiliate agreement who scores well on all five dimensions. This has happened on our site and will continue to happen.
Providers who advertise "unlimited" plans while imposing undocumented CPU second limits and inode caps receive lower scores than providers who are honest about their constraints — regardless of their affiliate relationship status.
3.3 Editorial Independence
This site was built by a software architect with over 20 years of experience in web development and web hosting infrastructure. The motivation for building it was precisely the problem described above: most hosting review sites rank by commission, not by merit. Our scoring system and editorial independence are the site's core value proposition. Compromising them for commercial gain would destroy the purpose of the site.
No hosting provider has paid to be featured, paid to receive a better score, or paid to suppress a negative finding. If a provider approaches us with such a request, we decline it.
4. How Affiliate Links Are Displayed
Affiliate links on this site are primarily the "Visit site →" buttons on provider review pages and listing pages. These buttons open the provider's site through a tracking link. Where we use affiliate links, this is disclosed:
- At the bottom of every page on this site ("Affiliate links may earn a commission")
- On this Affiliate Disclosure page, which is linked from the footer
- In the relevant sections of individual provider reviews
Not every external link on this site is an affiliate link. Links to reference sources, regulatory bodies, documentation, and third-party tools are typically not affiliate links.
5. Regulatory Compliance
This disclosure is made in compliance with:
- FTC Endorsement Guidelines (US): The Federal Trade Commission requires clear disclosure of material connections between publishers and the companies they review. Our affiliate relationships are a material connection and are disclosed on this page and throughout the site.
- ASA/CAP Code (UK): The Advertising Standards Authority requires that marketing communications be obviously identifiable as such. Our affiliate-linked buttons are commercial communications and are disclosed accordingly.
- EU Consumer Rights Directive: We comply with applicable EU requirements for transparency in commercial communications.
6. Our Commitment to You
Affiliate income allows us to maintain this site, invest in testing, and produce in-depth technical content without charging readers. In exchange for that income, we commit to the following:
- Affiliate status never changes a score, ranking, or review verdict
- We review providers without affiliate agreements if they are relevant to our readers
- We publish negative findings about providers regardless of their affiliate status
- Our scoring methodology is fully published and verifiable
- Promotional pricing shown on this site always includes the renewal price where disclosed — we do not hide the long-term cost
7. Questions and Concerns
If you believe that a ranking on this site has been influenced by a commercial relationship, or if you have any other questions about our affiliate arrangements, please contact us via our contact form. We take these concerns seriously and will investigate and respond.