Here are the 14 methods we use to qualify web hosting providers:

Direct Contact and Expert Insider Information
For the past 8 years we have been studying and working extensively in the web hosting and the web site development industries. Our experience includes working personally with over 2,000 web masters with multiple web sites. Several of our top agents and contributors have helped to build out the systems for some of the largest and most successful web hosting companies. Our extensive web hosting industry connections have provided our team with constant insight on which companies were doing well & which companies were not. We keep our finger on the pulse of the industry to better identify who are the best web hosting providers.

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Better Business Bureau Ratings
Consumer advocacy groups are a great resource when investigating the service standards of web hosting providers. We sift through all of the customer complaints and accolades to better understand the service conduct of those companies toward their clients. Every one of the providers we represent have a rating of good or better.

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New Customer Gain/Loss Statistics
Statistics present unbiased information. At TopLevelHosts.com we utilize several resources to receive information on how many new accounts are signed up and how many accounts are lost for every web hosting provider. This way we get to see how well they are growing, how well they are retaining their customers' business and also the net gain or loss for each web host in any given week. This information provides us with a snapshot as well as long term trends on the health of the hosting provider.

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Spot Checking Customer Service Departments
Our belief is that when a company says that they are staffed & available for you 24/7 then you should be able to reach a support representative at 3am in the morning, or on Holidays, on weekends or even during the SuperBowl. We make hundreds of phone calls every month to spot check all of the web hosting providers we investigate to make sure that the ones we represent are following through on the commitments they make to their clients.

Internal System Testing
Our associates act as Secret Shoppers by testing hundreds of live and demo control panel systems from a large variety of web hosting providers. We test for; functionality, system integrity, clearly understandable walk through instructions & ease of use for our novice to expert referral clientele.

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Solid Corporate Structure and Experienced Management
There are an estimated 20,000 + web hosting companies listed on the internet and hundreds emerge or drop out of business every month. Some of our main contributing factors for deciding which web hosting providers to recommend are qualifiable integrity & solid internal structure. We make sure that we are representing web hosting providers which are in no way positioned to have catastrophic business interruption or complete failure. The Web Hosting providers we represent must have a minimum of 4 + years of an established positive track record in the industry. Each company must have adequately trained staff with a manageable ratio of employee to web hosting members. The Directors at these companies must show strong corporate leadership as a firm understanding of the direction of the web hosting industry as a whole.

Pro Active Load Balancing of the Servers
It is important to make sure that a server is load balanced for space, bandwidth and system processes so as to optimize the results for that server. When servers are over crowded the websites housed on those servers can become sluggish or can go offline altogether. We utilize a 3rd party verification system and check hundreds of servers each week to make sure that the hosts we represent are not over crowding their servers.

Quality Hardware and Reliable Systems
There are very few web hosting companies in the marketplace which build their own servers or who lay their own bandwidth, so this category is relatively easy to judge as to which providers are doing a good job & which are not. Is the web hosting company you will be hosting with, using the Best of Breed technologies available? And as the web hosting provider utilizes 3 rd party software, are they updating their systems when updates need to occur? We make sure that our web hosting referral companies are reinvesting in their hardware & software infrastructure to ensure the best possible service for their customers.

Industry Leaders
Each web hosting provider which we represent must have an established track record and a respectable volume of customer accounts. Also each provider must be a profitable company. We have seen far too many web hosting companies go out of business leaving their clients intellectual property in turmoil and with very little hope of any recovery on their web hosting investments. We are not looking for, nor will we automatically select the largest providers in the industry to represent. We look at the total number of clients a web hosting provider has, in conjunction with the providers' weekly net gain/loss information and combine that with our other deciding factors to firmly establish credibility of these web hosting companies.

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Communication Infrastructure in Support of Clients
Not only must the hosting providers have service representatives available to address customer issues, but they must also have a communication infrastructure to ensure that every call & every email are resolved in a timely manner. Many times the initial email response by a web hosting company to a customer request may need further follow up. The top web hosting providers have invested in customer tracking systems to ensure that each & every client issue gets recorded, tracked and followed up on to it's final resolution.

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Reliable Uptime
Many times we are providing web hosting referrals to businesses, professionals and other corporate entities which need to be certain that their web sites are available for customers, clients and important visitors. Many web hosting companies will market themselves as having a 99% uptime guarantee but those guarantees are not always met. We utilize two independent 3rd party systems to monitor the uptime percentages of our referral hosts to ensure that they are delivering what they promise.

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Upload/Download Speed
We can tell a lot about a web hosting service from the speed by which a website can load onto a DSL or T-1 connection. If a site is not too heavily loaded with large file size images, the site should load in under .4 seconds. If a site loads quickly we know that a host is using a Tier 1 bandwidth provider. If the site does not load quickly we know that, that host is not investing in the bandwidth systems for their clients. We randomly check different web sites on different servers for every host to make sure that they are using Tier 1 providers.

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Professional System Administration Engineers
Unless you are hosting with a reseller of someone else's services, your web hosting provider will have their own System Administration team. The system administration team is an integral part of coordinating all of the services and hardware that the web hosting company will bundle together to ensure that your web hosting service runs well. This team is also the responders for system attacks or system failures that happen to every web host. Without a strong System Administration team your web hosting service will be more likely to have down time and as the web site manager, you will be more likely to experience aggravation with your web hosting provider. All of the providers we recommend through this site have top notch system administration teams.

Web Hosting Forum Groups and User Reviews
We take into account as many variables as possible when researching our web hosting choices. Most reviews of web hosting companies are negative, as there are very few people who, as satisfied members of a particular web hosting provider, will take the time to write a positive critique of that company. Persons who may feel that they were mistreated by a web hosting provider will more often look for a place to write a negative review of that host & describe their ordeals. We sift through all of the reviews and data to get a clear picture of the quality of the web host.