The quality of your web host will determine the performance of your website or blog, so it is absolutely essential that you do your homework before getting into a contract with any web host. The internet is a good place to start your research, but it is also a treacherous place, don’t believe everything you read. There are some websites that post recommended hosting lists. For example, https://wordpress.org/hosting/ is a really well known recommendation list and many well known web hosts like Bluehost pay money to this site to recommend them. In reality Bluehost isn’t half as good as the glowing recommendations would have you believe.
So, ignore recommendations and focus on reviews instead. Genuine customer reviews aren’t very easy to find but when you do find them they are worth taking seriously. When you visit a website for a web host, you will probably find plenty of customer reviews posted there. Though it is possible that a company might post only genuine customer reviews, there is no real way to stop them from posting reviews that they have manufactured. If multiple reviews have similar use of language and even if some of them are negative, you can safely assume that those reviews were written by one person.
You can also look at forums for reviews. There are independent web hosting forums where clients often discuss in details the benefits and shortcomings of individual web hosts. But there are also forums associated with various web hosting agencies, they are heavily regulated and if someone writes a less than flattering review, the web host might decide to not publish it at all.
That leaves reviews by independent sites; these sites publish unbiased and in depth reviews of various web hosts and will make the task of vetting a web host much easier for you.
